Brainripples

Genealogy: Another name change (ERLANGER)

2013-05-22T01:18:43Z

Just a quick note, because I need to document this.

I've been looking into the ERLANGER family of Ichenhausen, and using the data from jgbs.org to reconstruct the tree. I had five men who looked (based on their dates of birth) like they should be brothers, but I couldn't find birth records for them.

Finally I hit on the idea of just looking for people born at about the right time with the right set of first names. And sure enough, I found three records that had the right first name and birth year, all with the last name MEZGER [sic] and the parents Gerson and Sara.

To cross-check, I found death records from Gerson and Sara Erlanger in 1847 and 1843, respectively.

If I assume that sometime between 1820 and 1840 the family changed their name from Butcher to People-From-Erlangen, then I have a complete family picture. No one before 1840 used Erlanger, no one after 1820 used Mezger or Metzger, and I have a consistent set of names and dates across the boundary if I assume that single change. (I may yet find records from those two decades that helps me narrow it down further.)

I consider that sufficient evidence to enter it with confidence into my database. (But I'm writing this quick note to document my process.)

[Edited to add: There were a few siblings still missing, but when I searched Ichenhausen for anyone with the parents Gerson and Sara, I got the remaining siblings, with last names like MOSES and MAYYER, which are clearly errors for MEZGER. I consider that final confirmation that my hypothesis is correct. There's also another family, Gabriel and Esther METZGER, who at least didn't butcher the spelling of the name, but which I have no evidence is at all connected.]

Genealogy: Wertheim!

2013-05-06T23:51:30Z

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!

Excuse me, I'm really excited, because today I found THREE of the things that have been high up on my genealogy goal list, which helped me reach five of my goals.

As I'm sure I've mentioned, I have been stymied by the disappearance, as it were, of my great-grandmother Pearl Wertheim. I have her in the census from 1905, 1915 (not pictured), and 1920, in each case living with my great-grandfather, her son Leo. And then she disappeared.

Part of what frustrated me is that I had a note from my grandmother saying that Pearl lived to nearly 100, and she was born in 1840 or so, so I was looking at the 1930s. And when I asked around, older cousins said "Yeah, she went to live with so-and-so" but that never panned out.

And part of what frustrated me was her name. I knew her, from my grandmother's remeniscences, as "Pearl Wertheim." But in these census records, she's clearly listed as "Pauline."

And then other names started trickling in. I found marriage certificates and death certificates from Leo's siblings where Pearl's name was listed as "Pesa" or "Pessel", and her maiden name was given as "Falk" or "Fowlik".

I finally decided to cast my net a little wider. I used Steve Morse's excellent front-end on the Italian Genealogical Group database to look for any death certificate issued after 1920 for a woman with the last name Wertheim born in the early 1840s. And there were two plausible chocies:

Bessie P. Wertheim, 7 Apr 1923
Rebecca Wertheim, 12 Dec 1928

The first seemed more likely (since the 1925 census had Leo with no Pauline) but I decided to send away for both from the Familysearch Photoduplication service.

Well, today they arrived, and as soon as I opened Bessie's, I knew I had the right one:

* The address is 24 Patchen Ave. I have seen that address on so many documents!
* Her father's name is given as Leo Falk. The last name is consistent with the previously obtained evidence, and the name "Leo" occurs many times among her descendants. (Alas, the mother's name is "unknown").
* The signature on the back is from Leo Wertheim, son.
* As a bonus confirmation, the physician signing the medical portion is L. L. Kranzer, which is her grandson (whom I knew was an M.D.)

So, goal one achieved: I now know when my great-grandmother passed away, and I can stop chasing will-o'-the-wisps.

Also, the death certificate states that she was buried at Union Field Cemetery, in Ridgewood. I never would have found that -- no one else in the family is buried there (although there are two other cemeteries nearby where others in our family are buried), and they don't have a searchable index on the web. I did send them an email, and they were able to provide me with the section and grave number.

So, goal two achieved: I now have specific locations for the graves of all my ancestors buried in the United States except one.

Furthermore, the death certificate said that she'd been in the country for 26 years. I went back to Leo's naturalization papers, which had the following:

It was hard to read, and I was never able to quite work it out to an actual record. But this time I managed to hit it all the right way. Searching was fruitless, but I went to the Ellis Island site and started with the ship's name. I had been misreading it as the Normandie, but it's not, it's the Normannia; it arrived in New York not on July 3, 1896, as Leo says later in the petition, but on July 6. And they were listed not as Pearl and Leo Wertheim, but as Pesse and Leib Werdesheim:

And I was able to find the corresponding record in the Hamburg database of departing passengers, with their home town listed as Mielec, which I knew was correct.

So, goal three achieved: I now had a passenger record for both Leo and Pearl. To be honest, I had not expected them to be traveling together; I thought Pearl had come later, perhaps with one of her deaf daughters. So I had actually had this listed as two separate goals.

It does also mean, though, that I probably need to start looking for Pearl's naturalization paperwork around the same time as Leo's. I just have to try more names. :-)

But let me actually rewind for a moment. Part of why I had trouble finding the passenger record had been that I was looking under the wrong date and the wrong ship name, but it was also that I was looking for Leo or Leopold Wertheim, and this was Leib Werdesheim.

Werdesheim?

Was that an error on the part of a clerk at Ellis Island? If so, why do the Hamburg departure registers have the same error? Was the mistake made there and copied in New York?

On a hunch, I went to the JRI-Poland website, which does Jewish Record Indexing; while Mielec was part of Galicia/Austria when my family lived there, it's now in Poland and the Polish State Archives hold the records.

I searched for Werdesheim records in Mielec, and I found Leo's older brother Hersch:

and Leo:

(The work "krawiec", by the way, means "tailor", which they were. And I knew their father's name was Moses. And here Pearl/Pauline/Pesse is listed as Pesel, which by now doesn't surprise me.)

And I thought I found a skeleton in our closet:

There's no father listed, and "nie ślubne" apparently means "not married."

But I have records of Bessie, married to Max Fleisher, with a daughter named Esther born in 1896 and a daughter named Sarah born in 1898. Per the 1910 US Census, they arrived here in 1898. So this is probably not as scandalous as the records say.

Anyway....

So all this time, Wertheim turns out to have been a changed name!

And it means I've now acheived another goal: For the first time, I have a record trail on my father's side that continues back across the ocean!

I don't know if I will spend the money to actually get copies of these records. (The LDS doesn't have these, at least not according to the JRI site, although if someone out there knows enough Polish to look at the catalog on Familysearch and see if they actually do have these on microfilm I'd appreciate the input!)

But knowing that I've been searching on the wrong name means that I can re-search my research. I've already noted that there are other spellings: Werdescheim (as we see in Hersch's record above) and I recall seeing a few other variants which I can't put my finger on now.

All in all, a very rewarding sequence of finds!

Book review: "The Legacy: Teachings for Life from the Great Lithuanian Rabbis"

2013-04-23T23:59:50Z

Koren recently sent me a copy of "The Legacy: Teachings for Life from the Great Lithuanian Rabbis" by Rabbis Berel Wein and Warren Goldstein.

This book tries to capture for a modern readership the moral worldview of Lithiuanian Jewry for the 19th and 20th centuries, in particular the devlopment of the mussar movement. Rabbi Wein's focus is mostly historical, and Rabbi Goldstein's is philosophical.

The problem with this book is that I'm not sure that the audience for it exists. Actually, Rabbi Wein's chapters on the historical development of Lithuanian mussar are moderately interesting; my problem is mainly with Rabbi Goldstein's chapters.

If one already is interested in mussar, the philosophical sections are "preaching to the choir", and not even useful in reminding oneself of what is to be done. It's not a practical guide to improving one's behavior; it's an exploration of the underpinnings and principles of mussar.

Conversely, if one is reading this as an introduction, the copious but useless footnotes seem to protest too much "see, this is real lomdus!" But these sections are so busy justifying every point that they lack the moral force of a real tochacha. One walks away thinking, "Yes, those who subscribe to the Lithuanian mussar worldview can justify their position as being within the boundaries of traditional Judaism." Which is nice, but the reader hardly walks away feeling that one has encountered "teachings for life."

I can't conjure up the demographic, if you will, who will gain from those sections.

And with Rabbi Goldstein's chapters failing to deliver on the moral imperative, the Rabbi Wein's chapters are reduced to intermittently interesting peeks at history. The work that they do to build up key figures like Rabbi Israel Salanter is dissipated, when it should be converted into ethical force.

And so, with regret, I cannot recommend this book. I feel very uncomfortable taking a public stand with a criticism of such august and great rabbis, whose work for the Jewish community and for the Creator of all is worthy of so much respect. Ironically, if I'd simply bought the book myself, I'd probably be comfortable remaining silent, but I would not be honest with my readers, nor with myself, if I withheld my feedback of a review copy in order to spare the feelings of the authors and publisher.

Thoughts after yesterday's attack

2013-04-16T13:35:59Z

A thought on "bouncing back", on this day which is a mixture of Israel's Independence Day and Boston mourning its dead and wounded from yesterday's attack.

I was in Israel in March 1996. I walked down a Jerusalem street covered in blood, shattered glass, and Zaka volunteers climbing the trees to collect body parts for burial. I heard the bombing at the mall in Tel Aviv, and saw images of it on TV that didn't try to protect viewers' sensitivities.

And what did the Israelis do? They mourned the dead, they cleaned up the bombing site, and they got back to normal the next day. To do otherwise was, as the phrase goes, "to let the terorrists win."

Now I understand that there are a few big differences between the bombings of the Boston Marathon and the bombings in 1996 Israel.

First, there's an active crime investigation going on here, whereas in Israel it was known exactly who was behind the bombings and how they got there. (And that's why there's a wall.)

Second, Americans are still in shock that it can happen here. The bad news is that the very essence of a free society is that we tolerate a small number of bad guys in order to preserve the best possible life for the vast majority of good guys. Terrorism leverages that against us... and tempts us to "give up essential libery to gain a little temporary safety."

But we must return to normal. We must reopen downtown as soon as possible once the police have gathered evidence. We must patronize the stores and restaurants on Boylston Street. We must gather next Patriots' Day to cheer on the runners.

We must give up a little temporary safety to gain essential liberty.

Genealogy: Some supporting documents from New York, 1898-1907

2013-03-31T14:04:57Z

I recently received some document scans from FamilySearch, and wanted to quickly document what I've learned and what new questions I have.

First: Rachel's birth certificate. (Rachel was an older sister of my paternal grandfather; she's the one whose ketubah I posted about last week.) This is the one with the creative spelling of "Rachel" as "Reitshell"

Some amusing errors ("Sex: German", "Number of previous children: 99 Clinton"), some other clear errors (Ida's maiden name was not "Smith"; I interpret this as the midwife saying "Oh, I forgot to ask her that, and I'm not schlepping back down there.") and a new datum: My great-grandparents lived at 99 Clinton St. It also confirms that the move to New York happened between 1891 and July 1892.

Next: When did Simon get married, and to whom? There were three possible matches in the index, and I requested all three of them. I won't post the one that's clearly not a match, but there are two that are a match, and that's a surprise:

Two different marriage certificates, dated two months apart, with different witnesses, different location, different rabbi, but clearly the same people:

Field              June                  Aug
Certificate        17577                 20961

Groom              Simon Eliot Greene    Simon Eliot Green
Groom Address      607 Water St.         607 Watter St.
Groom Age          21                    20
Groom Occupation   Clerk                 Salesman
Groom Birthplace   Boston, Mass          --Russia-- Boston Mass
Groom Father       Barnett Greene        Barnett
Groom Mother       Ida --Cohen-- Levin   Ida Levin

Bride              Lillian Gladys Cohen  Sellian Gladys Cohen
Bride Address      107 E 104th St        107 E 104th St
Bride Age          18                    20
Bride Birthplace   New York City         Russia
Bride Father       Samuel Cohen          Samuel
Bride Mother       Jennie --Cohen--      Jennie Rokozinsky

Wedding location   109 Norfolk Street    78 Allen St
                   Manhattan             Manhattan
Wedding date       28 June 1907          14 Aug 1907
Rabbi              B. Moott              Louis Klein Rev
Rabbi Station      16 Jefferson St.      of Cong. T.a.a. Dinaburg
Rabbi Residence    109 Norfolk St.       364 E 4th St

Witnesses          J. Miller             P. Gordon
                   Morris Schneider      Moses Max

Why are there two? Heather suggests that the families couldn't agree on which shul would host the wedding, so they got married twice and didn't tell the other side of the family.

And which is more trustworthy as a source of information? The first one appears to be filled out in Simon's handwriting; the second misspells the name of the bride, "Watter" for "Water", etc. -- but it has data for the bride's mother's maiden name.

None of the four witnesses looks familiar to me.

Edited to add: I just figured out that the rabbi on the second certificate is not from J.a.a.???burg but it's Tiferes Achim Anshei Dinaburg. THis correlates with information about Rachel's burial; her grandson Ralph had told me earlier this year that she's buried at Mount Neboh Cemetery in the "Society Grounds - Dinaburg Plots"; this is incredibly useful because I know that Ida, Barnett, and Simon are buried at Mount Neboh Cemetery but that cemetery's records are not online and the ledgers are only searchable by burial society, so I was unable to get anywhere with my inquiries to them. But now I think I have a starting point! And where is Dinaburg, and is it where my family came from?

Moving on to another wedding, we have my father's mother's aunt Annie Wertheim, who married Hyman Phillips. One source of confusion here is that Hyman married two times; his first wife, named Annie, died, and when he remarried, his second wife was also named Annie. I wasn't sure which one was my great-grandaunt.

Now I know: it was the first one.

This is yet another data point that her mother's maiden name was Pesa Falk. I wonder whether the second witness, Julis (Julius? Jules?) Brown, is the same as her sister's husband, whom I have as Joseph Brown.

215 Rivington St. is a new address to add to my database.

So, some useful filling-in-the-details; no great revelations; and a couple of new puzzles.

Genealogy: Two ketubot

2013-03-15T14:21:02Z

A quick note about a special find from this week.

My mom was going through boxes of old paper records, and she found this:

It's my father's parents' ketubah.

A few quick notes about it: my grandfather Barnett, whose Hebrew name was Mona Dov, is listed here as Monish Duber, the Yiddish equivalent. (I am grateful to several people on the JewishGen email list for helping me figure that out.)

Interestingly, the blanks on the form where I've usually seen people's secular family names listed here, instead, seem to be inconsistent -- for my grandfather, it repeats his father's name but as "Moni Ber"; for my grandmother, it repeats her name, but with the two-yod spelling. I'm not entirely sure what's going on there, but I have some guesses.

Also, the handwriting on this is very confusing -- alefs that look like pehs, missing letters at the ends of words, etc. Clearly, the rabbi filling this out was in a rush and wasn't sweating the details.

Then again, if you compare their New York State marriage license (which I had previously obtained through the FamilySearch service), it's not much better:

My grandmother's maiden name is misspelled, and I wonder what was up with the location being changed.

Meanwhile, on the witness front: for the NYS license, they could use Abe's big brother Simon and his brother-in-law Ben Tropp. But Simon would be disqualified from witnessing the ketubah, because he was close family. Looking at the ketubah signatures, we see:

Moshe Yaakov b"r (= son of Reb) Shmuel ha-Levi
M??? Chayim ben R' (= Rav) Naftali

The first one looks like the same hand as the one that filled in the form, and is presumably the same Rabbi M. J. Mendelowitz who signed the NYS license. I don't know who the second one is.

Moving on, my mom also found in the same box a second ketubah:

This one was much harder to read, and unlike the first (where she assumed it was my grandparents' Abe and Rosalie so it was mostly a question of making sure the names matched expectations) we started off with no idea whose it was. But after a little deciphering and comparing names and dates with my existing database, I was able to nail it down as the ketubah of Abe's sister Rachel to David Joseph Sundel. Their grandson Ralph is one of the cousins whom I have befriended in the past year.

My secular records have Rachel listed in some cases as Rachel Pearl, and in the ketubah she seems to be named Pesha Rachel, which works out well. Here her father's name is the straightforward Mona Dov that we've seen everywhere else, so there are no new surprises.

The witnesses seem to be Chayyim Yehudah bar P-sh-??-N?? and Shimon Leybish? b"r Tzvi Yaakov. I have no idea who they are.

But the big question is why Rachel's ketubah was in with my grandparents' papers. Why didn't it end up with one of her daughters? (Of course, we're going to give it to Ralph next time we get together.)

Review: "Radical Responsibility"

2013-03-12T00:19:44Z

Koren have sent me a review copy of Radical Responsibility: Celebrating the Thought of Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks edited by Michael J. Harris, Daniel Rynhold, and Tamra Wright. Usually I'm able to read a book over a few days, but this one has taken me over a month to read because it is so good and so full of provocative ideas.

Radical Responsibility is a festschrift on the occasion of Lord Sacks's retirement from the position of Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the [British] Commonwealth. The contributors include leading names in both Jewish and non-Jewish philosophy.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of a festschrift, it's a collection of essays by the honoree's students and colleagues, on subjects that are dear to the honoree and, usually, in which he was the teacher of the contributors. So this book contains no essay by Rabbi Sacks, but it illuminates his thoughts by their reflection in the thoughts of others.

The essays are generally of a very high caliber. They are accessible to the lay reader, and explore issues which Rabbi Sacks has grappled with in his writings. Several essays rewarded immediate re-reading, because they are so full of insights and are carefully constructed. I was particularly struck by Joshua Berman's close and radical re-reading of the seventh chapter of the book of Joshua; it wrestles effectively with some troubling issues.

I also particularly relished the contributions of Alasdair MacIntyre, who sets the stage for the whole book with humor and grace; Michael Walzer and Moshe Habertal, who each consider whether it is possible to establish an objective standard of interpersonal responsibility (and, concluding that there is not, each explores how one can form a moral subjective stance); Michael J. Broyde, who uses what seems at first to be a dry legalistic question to illuminate the tensions in our deepest held beliefs; Jacob J. Schacter, who is innovative in his suggestion of a framework in which the American ideal of personal autonomy flourishes within the structure of a halachic life.

Some of the essays fall short of this standard; there is the occasional wince-inducing run-on sentence that reads like a parody of academic excess. But far more often, there are sentences that are just as long and complex, but that string together multiple themes in an effective way to prove a powerful point.

Radical Responsibility is a worthy tribute to a man who, through his teaching, his books, and his personal example has helped to define what it is to be a committed Jew who is engaged in the moral struggles of the world. As I said at the outset, I am generally a speedy reader, but this book forced me to slow down to make sure I didn't miss a thing. I highly recommend it.

Genealogy: A ton of raw data from Hüttenheim

2013-03-03T20:30:29Z

This post is a followup to Friday's post, which includes the provenance of the records that I describe in excruciating detail below.

Last night, I copied all the possibly relevant records from the Hüttenheim file. For now, I'm just transcribing what I've got, with minimal analysis. My direct line ancestors lived in house 136 for most if not all of the time covered by these records, which made it somewhat easy to find them but may mean I missed some. There was also a family named Friedmann at house 80 who appear to have been Jonas's brother Mandel and his family.

To review the basics of what I know going in: My great-great-grandfather was Jonas Friedmann, who was married (I believe) to Babette Ermreuther from Ermreuth. Jonas's father appears to have been Moses Friedmann, and his mother's name looks like it began with a B.

These transcriptions are just a quick first pass, followed by another quick attempt to reconcile the different records with each other and to extract a provisional tree. But very productive for a quick pass.

NB: In the parent column, after the father's name, it usually (always?) says something like M_tz_y___. I believe that's the place name for where the father came from, which for all these records would be Hüttenheim or the region where it is. But I haven't yet decoded the specific wording of this particular string.

NB: In many birth records is the same word. I think it's aüsgetragen, which I interpret as "left town".

Note: I keep on updating this as I notice new things and fix mistakes or double back to re-examine records.

Births

House 136. 
Maija(?) Friedmann. 
20 April 1824. 
Father is Moses Friedmann -- can't make out the next few lines.
Mother is Lubla? geb. Hafsburger? Gutsburger?
Can't make out last line.

House 136.
Jonas Friedmann [my great-great-grandfather]
16 Februar 1826
Father is Moses Friedmann -- can't make out rest of first line or the next few lines.
Mother is Lubla? geb. Hafsburger? Gutsburger?
Can't make out last line.

House 136.
? Friedmann [see "Sigten" death record -- the dates match and the shape of the names is the same.]
? November 1828
Father is Moses Friedmann -- can't make out rest of first line or the next few lines.
Mother is Lubla? -- this one I really think looks like Gutsburger
Can't make out last line.

House 136.
Mandel Moses Friedmann (gestorben [died] 27 ??? vormittags 1/2 2 Uhr [=1:30 AM] 1900 [I've noted that in many cases they added death information retroactively into the birth register.]
6 July 1831
Father is Moses Friedmann -- can't make out rest of first line or the next few lines.
Mother is Lubla? geb. Gassburger? [this time there's the ess-zet so we can at least be certain finally about those two letters!]
Can't make out last line.

136.
Jache (?) ?? 
27 ??? 1834
Moses Friedmann ???

House 17 [so probably a different branch]
Jette Friedmann 
born 7 November 1853
Herschel(?) Friedmann
[the second line is what almost all records say]
[can't make out mother's info]

House 17
Louis? Friedmann
???
(gestorben)
???

House 136
??del Friedmann
???
31 March 1858 
Father: H???del Friedmann
???

House 17 - Mirjam? Friedmann
???
1858
???

House 17
???
1860

[Column headers included]
House 136
Moses Friedmann [Note: grandfather Moses died 1861]
???
27 März 1864 nachmittag [afternoon]
Father: Jonas Friedmann
???
Mother: B??? Ermreuther
?? from
Ermreuth

[House unclear]
Moses Friedmann
???; (gestorben)
20 Februar mittag 2 Uhr [2 PM] 1865
Father: Mandel Friedmann [so the house should be 80]
???
Mother: ???

136
Benjamin Friedmann
???
22 Dezember ?? 1866
[parent block illegible]

136
Rue?ter? Friedmann
???
30 July 1868 ?? 4 Uhr
Jonas Friedmann
??? ?erbuerts??
geboren Ermreuther
von Ermreuth

80
Leopold Friedmann
5 ?? 2 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann
?? gebooren ???lein
???

80
Mathilda Friedmann
25 März ??? 4 Uhr 1870
Mandel Friedmann
???

136
Jetta Friedmann
(gestorben)
27 März 1870 nachmittag 2. Uhr
Jonas Friedmann
???
Babethe? Ermruether?
von Ermrueth

[This appears to be a duplicate record, but with no house number?]

[ignore the first record]
80
Salomon Friedmann
(gestorben)
21 Februar 1873
??? 2 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann
???

80
Moses Friedmann
???
(gestorben)
5? Feb? 1874
Mandele Friedmann
???

136
Rossa? Friedmann
???
13? Dezember 1874
Jonas Friedmann
???
geboren Ermreuther
aus Ermreuth

80
Fo??? Friedmann
???

L???tser Friedmann
???
(??)
1 Dezember
Mittag
11 Uhr
Mandel
mitz komste?
??? Sofie?

136
Helene Friedmann
????
25 Jun 1876
[parent block hard to read]

136
Hermann Friedmann
???
10 März
Jonas Friedmann
???

?rogold? Friedmann
?
(gestorben)
2 Dezember? 1879
Jonas Friedmann
???

136
P?? Friedmann
???
3? August 1881
Jonas Friedmann
??? geboren
Ermreuther ??? -
tsan, aus Ermreuth

17 [so one of the cousin families]
Jetta Friedmann
(gestorben 1935 in
???
amerika)
---
23 ?? 1887
3 Uhr
--
L?smann? Friedmann

Deaths

Where two dates/times appear, the first is death, the second burial

136
?st?? Mandel
Friedmann
???
???
---
das 20 (30?) ??? 1828
--
Anj. Hindal? Friedmann
geb. Weissmann?
von Boffaden?
72 Jahre 5 Monaten 5 Tage
All???

136
Sigten?? Friedmann?
28 März [1836] abend 8 Uhr
30 März [1836] früh 5 Uhr
???
7 Jahre 6 Mon.
???

136
L?z??b Friedmann
???
Ludwig?
---
12 März 1857 Mittag 11 1/2? Uhr
14 März
[long text in cause of death, which I can't make out right now]

136
???
20 Aug? [1858]
[Parents:] Moses Friedman M???
6 ??
[long text in cause of death, which I can't make out right now]

136
Pflum? Friedmann
??? geboren
13 1/2 ??? früh 1860
15 1/2 ?? nachmittag
Ly?thal? Friedmann M.tzkom??
8 Jahren 5 Tag? 120?
[cause of death???]

136
Moses Friedmann
2 Januar? [1861]
3 Nachmittag
Metzkomste [are these his parents names?]
70 Jahre
???

[ignoring the first for now]
80
Adolf Friedmann
15 Märtz [1870] Nachmittag 11 Uhr
17 Mittags 3 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann ???
3 1/2
???

80
Moritz Friedmann
16 März [1870]
Nachmittags
??? Uhr
---
17 Märtz
Mittag
3 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann
5 1/2
???

136
Jetta Friedmann
12 April [1870]
14 Nachmittags 10 Uhr
???
Jonas Friedmann
14 Tagen
???

80 Salomon Friedmann
???
25 März [1873] früh 5 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann
??
1 Monat 3 [Tagen]
???

80
Jonas Friedmann
???
13 Januar 1876
Nachmittag
2 Uhr
14th [Jan 1876]
Nachmittag
1 Uhr
Mandel Friedmann ???
6 Minut???


80 
Moses Friedmann
???
---
18 [Jan?] [1876]
Nachmittag
6 Uhr
---
19 ?
Abend
---
??? Mandel Friedmann ???
2 Jahren
???

Bessa? Friedmann
???
??? No. 10
--
24 August [1876]
Nachmittag
4 Uhr
---
25 [August 1876]
Nachmittag
??? Moses Friedmann ???
78 Jahre alt.
???

136
Lugald? Friedmann
???
??? No. 17?
?? 1879
??? Morgen 8 1/2 Uhr?
Jonas Friedmann ??? Ermreuth
9 Tagen 0 Uhr
???

80
Jakob ????
1881
???

136 B??ther? Friedmann
--
8 März 1889
Fruh
5 Uhr
--
10 März
Fruh 10 Uhr
--
Johann ??? Malka?? Friedmann??
---
1? Jahr
??

80
Mandel Friedmann
???
27 Januar 1900 ???
29 Januar 1900
Salomon und Batsheva? Friedmann
68 Jahre
Pnemonia
???

[no house number]
Hershel? Friedmann
Mitz yaw.?
18 Mai 1904 früh 3 Uhr 
16 Mai 1904 Nachmittags 3 Uhr [sic - yes, burial is listed before death]
Moses Friedmann und Lublu? Friedmann
82 Jahre 3 Monat
???

[no house number]
Jonas Friedmann
Mitz. yaw?
12 Juni Abend 6 Uhr 1905
14 Juni Vormittags 9 Uhr
Eins geborren Moses Friedmann u. Bablu? Friedmann
79 Jahre 3 Monat.
???

80
??lein Friedmann
M??? M???
19 Februar 1910 früh 1/2 4 Uhr [3:30 AM]
21 Februar 1/2 9 Uhr [8:30 AM]
geboren Lewstein?
Herz ???ung [Heart attack?]

Lus??? Friedman
5. März 1919 Mittag 1 Uhr
7. März Mittag 1/2 1 Uhr
64 1/4 Jarhe

[House] 17
G??? Friedmann
Frau des Lehman Friedmann [wife of the teacher]
1936
gestorben ??? zu Wuertzberg
[This is the last entry in the death register]

Marriages

1863
Jonas Friedmann
????
????
Ba???tz von
Ermreuth? Jungfrau?
---
Vater der er??abten Moses
Friedman M?tzt??ste
???
---
??? 23. Juni
Da???
???

1864
??? Mandel Friedmann
??? ??tser
??stburger und
Madchen? M?? ?llsin??
??? ???
---
Vater der ????
Moses Friedmann
Matzbur M?er
aud fr??
---
Das 4
März ???
???
???
???

??ss ???
????
????
Rossin Friedmann
aus Huettenheim?
---
Va?? ????
???
???
???

Las??? Friedmann ???
????
????
???ssin Bru????
---
11 Dezember 1883 ????

And now to summarize and cross-reference:

From this, we can derive the following tree:


Mandel Friedmann (1756-1828)
  Moses Friedmann (1791-1861) m. Bessa? Gassburger? (1798-1876)
    Herschel Friedmann (1822?-1904) [house 17]
      Jette Friedmann (1853-?)
      Mirjam (1858-?)
      ???del (1858-?)
      ??? (1860-?)
    Jonas Friedmann (1826-1905) m. Babette Ermreuther [house 136]
      Moses Friedmann (1864-)
      Benjamin Friedmann (1866-?)
      Rueter? Friedmann (1868-?)
      Jette Friedmann (1870-1870)
      Rosa Friedmann (1874-1942)
      Helene (Lina) Friedmann (1876-1942)
      Hermann Friedmann (1878-1931)
      Lugald? Friedmann (1879-1879)
      ? (1881-?)
    Sigten? Friedmann (1828-1836)
    Mandel Friedmann (1831-1900) [house 80] m. Sofie?
      Moses/Moritz Friedmann (1865-1870)
      Adolf Friedmann (1866?-1870)
      Leopold Friedmann (1869-?)
      Mathilda Friedmann (1870-?)
      Salomon Friedmann (1873-1873)
      Moses Friedmann (1874-1876)
      Jonas Friedmann (1875?-1876)
      L???tser Friedmann (1876-?)
    Jache Friedmann (1834-?)
    ??? (?-1858)

And the following whom we can't place - and may duplicate people 
in the above tree, once I take a second pass at reading their records.

Ludwig (d. 1857) [136]
Pflum??? (1852?-1860)
Jakob (d.1881) [house 80]
Jetta (1887-) [house 17]
B??ther? (1888?-1889) [house 136 but child of Johann and Malka?]
???lein (?-1910) [house 80]
Lus??? (1855?-1910)
G??? (?-1936) [house 17] [wife of the teacher Friedmann - so probably a marriage]
Fo??? (?) [house 80]
Louis? (?) [house 17]

Genealogy: Amazing finds regarding Hermann Friedmann

2013-03-01T15:09:37Z

Continuing on the theme of Hermann Friedmann, my mother's mother's father -- I just struck gold.

In my last post, I admitted that I'd been a sloppy genealogist. I have in my records that Hermann's parents were Jonas Friedmann and Babette Erm(an)reuther, but that I don't know where I got that information from. Looking at my file-save history, I added that information to my database between Aug 24 and Aug 27 of last year, but I don't know where I got it from and I couldn't re-find it. That's bad.

It was particularly weighing on me because the Ermreuth connection has been very rewarding. I've found new cousins, found a doubled connection with a second cousin of mine, and learned a lot about the Jewish community of Ermreuth. If it turned out to be a chimera I was going to be very disappointed.

So I started looking in earnest. My starting point was my grandfather's "book" to my mother. He wrote:

The family Friedmann ... have their roots in Hüttenheim. To explain it Hüttenheim is to be found in Unterfranken, which is a part of Bavaria.

Hermann Friedmann was the sixth from eight in the family. He was a kosher-butcher and married to Ella Erlanger, which came from Ichenausen.... Hermann Friedmann was really a deep religious man, well liked everywhere.... I did not know him, he died in April 1931 and is buried in Nuremberg.

And I have a photo of HF's gravestone:

which gives me specific dates: Born 10 March 1878, Died 17 April 1931. And it gives me Hebrew names for HF's parents: Yonah and Brendel.

HF's death certificate reiterates the date of death but provides no further information.

At this point I should mention that there are online genealogies of the Erlanger family that correctly note that Ella's husband was Hermann Friedmann, but which confuse him with another man with the same name but different dates. I believe the confusion is that Ella and their son Julius were murdered in the Shoah, and both passed through Terezin; this "other" Hermann Friedmann also lived in Nuremberg, was deported to Terezin, and was killed by the Nazis, and a well-meaning genealogist made a reasonable but incorrect assumption.

So, back to my great-grandfather:

I went back to my collection of scraps of paper from the 1980s. One of them had a list of some of Hermann's siblings: Rosa, Lina (Helene), and Ricka [presumably short for Frederika, especially if the Ermreuther connection holds up]. It also notes that Ricka married Siegfried Rosenbacker [although "Rosenbacher" seems more likely] and they had two children, and that one of the brothers had two sons, one also named Hermann and one named Leo.

But nothing about their parents.

By Google-searching for "Hüttenheim birth records" I found that the Leo Baeck Institute had acquired:

photocopies from the Catholic Parish in Huettenheim of Jewish citizen lists, a photocopied letter to Eric Davidson from the Catholic Parish regarding the history of Jews and the Jewish community in Huettenheim, and a printout detailing the descendent of Jacob Uhlfelder. Also included are photocopies of birth, marriage, and death registers from the Huettenheim Jewish community in the 19th century

These are available in digitized form at http://archive.org/details/huettenheimjewishf001.

So I started looking. The records are not indexed, but they are in chronological order within each section. So I scanned until I found the birth records from 1878, and sure enough, there was HF's birth record:

Hard to read, but definitely the correct record. I learn that they lived at house 136. I can confirm the date of "10 Marz". More importantly, looking at the right-hand column, I see "Jonas Friedmann" as the father; the mother's name starts in the third line, which I can't make out (but doesn't look like "Babette") and then something that looks a lot like "geboren Ermreuther/aus Ermreuth" -- so, partial confirmation but not quite as clear as I'd like. Still, very exciting!

Next, I sought Jonas's death record. It came near the very end of the file:

This shows that Jonas died on 12 Juni, Abend 6 Uhr [6:00 pm], 1905, and was buried on 14 June, Vormittags 9 Uhr [9:00 AM]. He was born to Moses Friedmann and ___???. His age was 79 Jahr 3 Monat [79 years, 3 months]. I can't make out the last column.

Subtracting 79 years 3 months from June 1905 means he was born in early 1826, so that was my next search. Fortunately, these records go back to 1824, so I was able to find it:

Note that the house number is 136, even this early. The date appears to be 16 February 1826. The father is Moses Friedmann and I think the mother is listed as "Liebele [?] geboren [nee] Gussburgen"

I'm still troubled that I can't really read the "parents block" on HF's record, though. So I started to look for his siblings, hoping that whoever recorded them had better handwriting. And when I found Rosa's, I was very happy:

You can clearly see Jonas Friedmann. I can't make out the second line. But the third and fourth lines are "geboren Ermreuther / aus Ermreuth".

So I have partial confirmation of the information I set out to find, and several new pieces of information, including names for my great-great-great-grandparents. Another time, I plan to keep looking for Hermann's other siblings, for his mother's death record, for Jonas's parents death records, and for the record of Hermann's marriage to my great-grandmother Ella.

Purim Torah: Facebook

2013-02-24T17:35:28Z

How do we know that Facebook is kosher? We can learn this from God and Moses.

As it is written (Ex. 33:11) "And God chatted with Moses face-to-face as one chats with a friend." Since God does not have a corporeal being, what does "face-to-face" mean? It must mean that God used "Face"-book "chat", and Moses was on God's "friends" list.

Furthermore, it is written (Ex. 32:32) "And Moses said to God: Delete me from your book." This "book" cannot refer to Torah, because Rambam wrote: "I believe with perfect faith that this Torah will not be changed." It is inconceivable that Moses would ask God to alter God's Torah. So what could Moses have been asking for?

From what kind of book does one delete another person? From the Facebook, and Moses was asking God to unfriend him.

Furthermore, how do we know that Torah is to be handed from person to person using Facebook? Because the Talmud (BT Taanit 7a) teaches "Rabbi Chanina b. Ida said, 'Why are words of Torah compared to water [mayim]?'" Do not read "mayim", but rather read "meme". Torah will only endure when it is taught by means of pictures of kittehs with cute misspellings.

A thought about "unlocking mechanisms"

2013-02-01T16:16:10Z

I just read Tyler's Mystery Hunt wrapup, and I had a thought. I don't know if it's a good idea or a bad one, but I'll toss it out there.

The fundamental problem with Mystery Hunt seems to have become that we want to have an event that lasts long enough for the large power teams to not completely blast through it, but still let the smaller or less-powerful teams see most if not all of the Hunt. In recent years, we've shifted from a "solve a puzzle, get a puzzle" unlocking mechanism to one which combines "points earned" with "time elapsed"; this provides an unlocking mechanism which keeps Hunt a race for the fastest teams, but allows slower or blocked teams to keep getting fresh puzzles.

Perhaps we need to experiment with rate-limiting puzzle release.

If you have a huge team that can parallelize the research or even have multiple subgroups working on the same puzzle, and the first to finish gets to call in the answer, good for you. Your score will be better than a team that doesn't have those advantages, and that will increase your odds of finishing the runaround first. (Perhaps every team that qualifies for the final runaround gets to do it, with an ACPT-style delayed start based on your team's score.)

But you may have to sit around and wait for the next set of puzzles to be released. Bring a copy of a Thomas Snyder puzzle book or Roger Wolf's cryptics or "The Maze of Games" to pass the time. Catch a nap or grab some food to keep your physical advantage. But maybe the answer to "large teams finish Hunt too fast" is to impose a speed limit, not to tinker with the puzzles to make the Hunt baseline solve time be longer.

(I also agree with what's been said elsewhere: the Boston Marathon isn't over when the first runner reaches the Pru; the Mystery Hunt isn't over when the first team finds the coin. I think speed limits might go hand-in-hand with this approach: No one can possibly "find the coin" before 8AM Sunday; all teams see all the puzzles at 8AM Sunday no matter how far back they are, even though the weaker teams don't have enough points to be "in coin-tention"; HQ stays open until 2PM; wrapup is at 3PM.)

Your thoughts?

NYT spaghetti, day 2

2013-01-23T14:24:14Z

Once again, today's NYT crossword puzzle lends itself to a game of Spaghetti.

First of all, notice in green that today's puzzle includes YOYO at 6-Down. And you all thought I was making it up yesterday, huh, but here we have YESTERDAY'S ANSWER IN TODAY'S PAPER. HA!

Directly opposite YOYO is NOON, at 55-Down, and slightly to the left of NOON is DATE. Is there a date somewhere in this puzzle? Oh, yes, there is:

ONE/23 is TODAY!

So clearly this meta is telling us to be prepared for an event at NOON TODAY. Perhaps we'll have to raid a meeting at location nine.... Or, if we're lucky, there will be PIES.

My Mystery Hunt writeup

2013-01-23T00:11:29Z

Short version: Long but gratifying hunt; had a great time.

Friday: Kickoff in Rockwell Cage, instead of Lobby Seven. Sad to break with tradition, and harder to mingle, but much better to see and hear what's going on. First round was fun; looking back I'd call it an "overture". There were six puzzles; I glommed on to the AlphaSleuth first, since I enjoy those, and we made fairly quick work of it. Then I joined Tahnan who was almost done with a second puzzle, and we quickly sussed out the final clue for that one from the work that he had already done. Soon our team had the zeroth meta down, and the "real" hunt was revealed; at that point it was 3pm and a good time for me to leave for Shabbat.

Saturday night: My team still hadn't cracked the first real meta. There were an enormous number of puzzles, and they were all extremely hard and/or long. None had flavortext to speak of. This was clearly a hunt written by and for a large team; pity that we're not a large team. I looked at the Ocean meta with some others and got nowhere. I and two others took the Dear Abby puzzle which clearly was all about Shakespeare characters; three hours later we were done. I contributed a little bit here and there to other puzzles, but it felt like a slog. We figured we were simply doing really badly, which was bad for morale; it turns out that ALL the teams were that far behind. At one point we opened a puzzle that turned out to contain 263 mp3 files, and we just said "hell no" and walked away from it.

Around 5am I tried to get some sleep but couldn't, so I made the excellent decision to go home and sleep in my own bed.

Sunday: Got back around 10:30 rested, showered, fed, and caffeinated. Our team was still stuck on the Ocean meta, and one of my teammates said "I wish this started off with 'BANK BREAKS...' and then he figured out what other letters would make a nice message, "... but I can't see how to extract that." And the light bulb went on, and I saw the extraction mechanism. We called it in, and were correct. Finally!

So then the person working on the Feynman meta asked me for my thoughts on it, and after he explained what he'd gotten, I asked "Have you tried extracting in time order?" My physics degree finally paid off! We followed the boson interactions in increasing time and spelled out the answer phrase.

So then the person working on the Maxwell Smart meta asked me to take a look, and I asked "What are you doing with the inserted words that each begin with a different letter of the alphabet?" -- which he hadn't noticed, and which was the key to extracting that

So within about an hour I had helped crack three supermetas. Which turned out in the end to be all the supermetas our team would get, but still enough to tie for third place. So yeah, I had a good hunt. :-)

Spent the rest of Sunday contributing to some other team solves. My favorite has to be Analogy Farm, which had a dozen of us sitting around calling out crazy ideas to each other.

Finally at 10pm I decided I needed a real night's sleep, since our team had decided that 8am Monday we were going to start cleaning up our room, and I rejoined my family at Arisia.

When I returned on Monday at 8am, coffee cup in hand, I was asked to look at the Blue Ox minimeta from the Rubik round. I was told that "Ox" was probably a clue, and even though we used it to determine that the hex values of the colors was important, one of our team also wanted to use it to mean "play tic-tac-toe." A little while later, I noticed that each nybble had only two non-zero values, and I copied those out as four tic-tac-toe boards. It was obvious from that point that each of the four games was forced, and that gave an ordering and extraction mechanism that worked. So that was my fourth meta. Around 10:30am I had to leave.

So, overall reactions:

1. IIF is an AWESOME team to be a part of. Even when the puzzles were unyielding, we had fun and we worked well together.

2. While the hunt was long, it was a case of "too much of a good thing." I didn't hit any puzzles that were broken or fundamentally unfair. And for me, since I miss 26 hours of Hunt for Shabbat, having a longer rather than a shorter Hunt is actually a good thing. My most disappointing Hunt was the one that ended around 11:30 on Saturday night, since I only got about six hours of puzzling done that year. This year, I was able to participate in about 2/3 of Hunt!

3. While the puzzles were of high quality overall, most of them were too long and too complex. And there wasn't any flavortext, so you really had nothing to give you a nudge if you were stuck, nor a confirmation that you were on the right track.

4. Manic Sages did a REALLY GOOD job of keeping the teams in the loop as they pruned their Hunt on the fly. I wish they'd told us on Saturday that everyone was running long, but other than that, kudos to them for being flexible (and inventing new events.)

5. I do miss having the occasional quick puzzle in the middle of the hunt. Not every puzzle has to be a three-hour masterpiece to be fun and enjoyable. Overall, I didn't get to solve enough "normal" puzzles.

Congratulations to the team who used the entire text of Atlas Shrugged as their team name; thanks to Manic Sages for a fun weekend; thanks to IIF for being awesome; and let's do this again next year!

Hunt is never truly over

2013-01-22T17:30:40Z

Before Mystery Hunt, Eric Berlin resumed hosting a few rounds of "Spaghetti," the game of finding meta answers where there aren't really any meta answers.

In that spirit, and because once you've gone through Hunt you see metas everywhere, here is the solution to the metapuzzle that I found in today's NYT crossword.

First, how do I know that there's a meta? Look at the NE corner, where the word HUNT is plain as day. (Highlighted in orange.) WILL even signed it for us in the NW corner (green). This also shows us the mechanism: L-shaped hidden words.

Since the elbow of HUNT is on the NE-SW diagonal, it's reasonable to assume that the others will be there, with their concave parts towards the center of the puzzle. And, in fact, we can find two such pairs, symmetrically placed (so we know they must be intentional). Highlighted in yellow is STAGES A HAT, which clearly refers to "Sunday in the Park with George". Highlighted in blue is YO-YO TIME, which clues "period" (as in a pendulum).

Both "Sunday in the Park with George" and "period" point to "DOT" as our final answer.

Genealogy: Ermreuther

2013-01-14T01:51:49Z

I haven't had much time to blog for the last few months, and the next few months will also probably be spotty.

You may recall that my last several posts were about my maternal grandmother's family. I wrote about her father, Hermann Friedmann: From research that others have done, I know that his parents were Jonas Friedmann and Babette Ermanreuther, but I do not know anything beyond that about his family.

(I'm now kicking myself, because I no longer remember what my source was for that, and I apparently didn't write it down.)

But I wasn't getting anywhere with it, until I realized that Ermanreuther was almost certainly a transcription error. There's a nearby town called Ermreuth, and so I tried changing her name to Ermreuther to see if anything turned up... and BINGO!

I found the family tree compiled by Peter Friedmann (no relation), who is on the board of The Synagogue and Jewish Museum of Ermreuth. He had my great-great-grandmother, Babette Ermreuther, and things seemed to line up between our trees.

Much of his data was from the book, Der jüdische Friedhof Ermreuth ("The Jewish Cemetery of Ermreuth"), compiled by Dr. Raaja Nadler (of the same organization). I was able to obtain a copy through the Newton Library, via inter-library loan from Yeshiva University. The book consists of about twenty pages of front matter, then 250 pages of photographs of every gravestone in the cemetery, with transcriptions, translations into German, and footnotes explaining how each person is related to the others in the book. The back contains indexes by name and by date as well as extensive family trees.

So now I have two more generations going back, along with some amazing additional information. Grave 63, my great-great-great-grandfather: "The just and upright man, a master of Torah and good deeds, Rabbi Jonah Tzvi son of Benjamin, who died on the holy Sabbath, 5th Sivan, and was buried on the first day of Shavuot, 633 in the truncated year" [i.e., 31 May 1873]

Not only that, but it means that I have another town to add to my areas of interest: Ermreuth, which is just north of Nurenberg. (Nurenberg is where my grandmother was born and raised, so this all makes sense.)

So I went to JewishGen to see who else is interested in Ermreuth. There was one person listed, so I contacted him. I explained my connection through Babette, and signed "Andrew Greene, Newton MA."

The reply that I got was amazing. First of all, this individual (C.A.) told me that we are half-third-cousins-once-removed. (Babette's mother Frederika died in childbirth of her second child, and Jonas -- whose gravestone I cited above -- remarried and their eldest child was C.A.'s great-grandmother.) Not only that, he also lives in Newton, about half a mile from my house.

And to top it all off, he told me that a second cousin of his (M.K.), also a half-third-cousin-once-removed of mine, lives halfway between our two houses.

All this on a line that was the shortest of all the lines in my tree until a few weeks ago, in a family that we had given up as lost. (We have a few relatives on my maternal grandfather's line, and a large family on my maternal grandmother's mother's side, but my Oma's father's side was, as you may recall from last time, gone: her only brother was killed by the Nazis and had no children; her father was, to our knowlege, an only child, and his parents unknown to us.)

So today C.A. and M.K. walked over to my house and we had a family reunion. We shared information and stories.

M.K. told me about his father, who was arrested after "Kristallnacht" and sent to Dachau, much like my great-uncle Leo. (I posted about Leo last November.) M.K.'s father, however, had good handwriting, and so was given slightly better living conditions and a job: writing out death certificates and other paperwork. This morning, we looked at Leo's death certificate, and while M.K. couldn't be sure, he thinks it is quite similar to his father's handwriting.

Originally posted at DreamWidth | Comment at DreamWidth using your LiveJournal account (OpenID) | Comments

Dvar Torah: Vayigash

2012-12-23T11:32:58Z

In today's parsha, we read:

וַיְדַבְּרוּ אֵלָיו אֵת כָּל-דִּבְרֵי יוֹסֵף אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר אֲלֵהֶם וַיַּרְא אֶת-הָעֲגָלוֹת אֲשֶׁר-שָׁלַח יוֹסֵף לָשֵׂאת אֹתוֹ וַתְּחִי רוּחַ יַעֲקֹב אֲבִיהֶם.
And they spoke (vay-dabru) to [Jacob] all the words (divrei) of Joseph that he said (dibber) to them, and he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to him, and the spirit of Jacob his father was restored to life. (Gen. 45:27)

What struck me about this verse was the emphasis on the root D-B-R (which doesn't come across so well in the English.)

What were these words? Rashi quotes a midrash from the gemara that Joseph reminded his father that when last they were together, they had been studying the laws of the egla arufah, the calf with the broken neck, and that the wagons (agalot, a pun on egla) were an allusion to this, and this was a way to confirm his identity. I find that explanation.... fanciful.

Let's set this question aside for a moment and ask another one.

Why did Joseph test his brothers? Some commentators say it was to give them a chance to perform teshuvah gemurah, complete return from sin, by placing them in essentially the same situation they were in when he was kidnapped, so they could demonstrate that they would not respond in the same way. Some say it was so he could determine whether Benjamin needed rescuing from his brothers. Both are good answers, but I want to suspend that question for a moment as well.

Two weeks ago, at the beginning of Vayeshev, Joseph brings to his father a bad report about the activities of some of his brothers. And what does Jacob do?

וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ לֶךְ-נָא רְאֵה אֶת-שְׁלוֹם אַחֶיךָ וְאֶת-שְׁלוֹם הַצֹּאן וַהֲשִׁבֵנִי דָּבָר וַיִּשְׁלָחֵהוּ מֵעֵמֶק חֶבְרוֹן וַיָּבֹא שְׁכֶמָה.
And [Jacob] said to [Joseph]: Go now, please, and look into the shalom of your brothers ... and return word (davar) to me.... (Gen. 37:14)

Here's the word D-B-R again. Decades ago, Jacob asked Joseph to send him word about the shalom of his brothers. Usually, this expression means the person's well-being, but it can also relate to their shleimut, their wholeness. Perhaps Jacob wanted to know if his sons were whole people.

And so now we can return to my two questions. Perhaps Joseph remembered the task his father had given him, which he has yet to fulfill.

But now that his brothers appear before him, he doesn't know the answer to his father's question: Have his brothers become shaleim in the intervening years?

So he tests them. He finds out whether they have done complete teshuvah, so that he can finally complete his father's assignment and return word to Jacob that his brothers have indeed, after all that transpired, become whole.

Shabbat Shalom.

Pirates of Penzance

2012-12-03T02:30:01Z

Saw PoP with the kids at MIT G&SP today. Wonderful production: most of the singers were great, and the direction was traditional with enough new ideas to keep it engaging. The kids had a blast, and I think the other family who joined us also enjoyed it.

A few thoughts -- and after all, any good production of an old favorite show should prompt some new thoughts about how I understand the show.

* "Sighing Softly to the River" has never really worked for me, except for the performance that Heather and I saw back in June, and I finally understand why. The patter baritone is singing a ballad about unrequited love, but meanwhile you've got the police and the pirates dealing with the whole no-place-to-hide problem. So the scene is played for slapstick, usually, and the song suffers. But what if we take Gilbert at his word: "Hush hush, not a word, I see a light inside. The Major-General comes, so quickly -- hide!" and then the pirates take cover, and the Major General comes to the window of the castle, holding a candle, sits by the window, and sings the song beautifully and movingly, while pondering how life has left him a single man at this stage of life.

* Similarly, what if "Ah Leave Me Not to Pine" were staged with Mabel downstage left, and Frederick having already exited. She sings with a tight spot on her. Then at his vocal entrance, he's discovered by a tight spot upstage right, already on the road, for his verse. Then they rush to each other, meeting center stage for the end of the number.

* In general, I'd love to see a version of Pirates where all of the songs are arranged in various modern pop styles. The Kings Singers did a great version of "Ah Leave Me Not to Pine" as a piano ballad; "Go Ye Heroes" should be belted like "And I Am Telling You (I Am Not Going)"; etc. I bet it would work.

Update to the Erlanger family post

2012-11-28T02:10:14Z

This week's posting is an update on my previous one.

First, I got permission from some of the relatives whose names I had elided to include them. Clive and Judy Callman's children are Jeremy and Tanya. Jeremy is married to Sarah; they have four children. Tanya is married to Victor Bentata; they have two daughters.

Their mother Judy sent some wonderfully useful responses to my previous post. She starts off with the observation: "It was quite spooky to see the photo of your great-grandmother Ella and to see just how much she looked like her sister - my grandmother Minna!!!"

I had written: "Emma was born in 1870. I don't know anything more than that."

Judy adds: As far as I know, Emma married a non-Jew in Germany, which was totally disapproved of by the family to such an extent that they sat Shiva and she and her husband 'fled' to ? Canada. I know that my mother traced her family and met up with them some many years ago. That meeting revealed that Emma had totally and utterly blocked out her previous life. Emma had not told her family anything at all about her past, her family, her religion or anything. The first they knew that she was Jewish was when she asked for a rabbi when she was near death and, if I am not mistaken, requested a Jewish burial......

In a followup email, she added: As I think about it, more details spring to mind!! I recall that Emma's husband became a policeman in Canada

Based on this, I did some more searching, and found her arrival at Ellis Island on the Kaiser Wilhelm, 2 Nov 1892, page 282, line 245. Interestingly, there are a few other people from Ichenhausen on the same boat, including Peter and Christoph Peters, who appear to be brothers of about the same age.

I had written: "Sofie married a man named Richard Rosenberg. I do not know his dates, nor do I know if they had any children."

Judy corrected my spelling of Sophie, and adds: Richard was a widower when Sophie married him. His wife had died in childbirth and although Sophie cared for the little boy, he too died at a very early age. It was always said that he was a 'blue baby' (whatever that would be in modern terminology). Sophie and Richard had no children of their own.

In her followup email, she added: I recall that my aunt Sophie Rosenberg (nee Heinsfurther) always knitted sweaters for me as a child and the same pattern and colour for your mother Edna!

I had mentioned our mutual cousin, Arnold Erlanger's, moving autobiography, Choose Life. Judy reminds me that: Our mother Hilde has also written a most moving and detailed story of her life and her ancestors called 'In Hinesight'.

I also heard back from Helga Erlanger, Arnold's daughter. She writes, in part: Hedwig Erlanger, my grandmother, died 8th May 1942 in Ichenhausen just before the family went to concentration camp. Her grave is in the Ichenhausen Jewish cemetery and was just restored for us by a German friend. Hedwig was the last Jew to be buried in Ichenhausen. Hetty and I were there last year and really impressed what the town has done to preserve / represent our history, It was a remarkable visit. We also got to see Arnold Erlanger Strasse (!) commemorating dad and his survival from Auschwitz.

Sure enough, if I go to Google Maps and start typing "Arnold Erlanger" it pops up with Arnold-Erlanger-Strasse 89335 Ichenhausen, Germany.

I also had mentioned Levi Erlanger, my great-grandmother's brother and Arnold's father. I didn't have much information on Levi himself, although I spent several paragraphs tracing his descendants to Chicago, Israel, and Australia.

Well, on Friday I spent some time at the library using the European records on Ancestry (which are not included in my domestic subscription, but which are included in what the library has access to). I found about a half-dozen pages from German military records from World War I documenting Levi Erlanger's service. Here are just a few excerpts, which I'm including at large size because the handwriting was so small and his service so extensive:

This last excerpt is the clearest: You can see details like his wife, "Hedwig, geb. Gutmann; 2 Kinder" (Hedwig, born Gutmann, 2 children); "Eltern tot" (parents dead); and religion listed as "Isr." (Israelitish -- i.e., Jewish). It is interesting to compare this record to some of the other records, which list his parents' names, sometimes with German crosses to indicate that they were dead, or the record from later in the war which records 3 children. (Arnold was born in 1916.)

Rising inflection

2012-11-21T15:09:18Z

When I was in college, one of my acquaintances had the practice of ending every declarative sentence with a rising inflection. I was told by a mutual friend that his parents, both psychologists, had experimented when he was a child by speaking to him that way, and poor soul, he was never able to break the habit.

I am now hearing this more and more in general society. My daughter has picked it up, I think from school. I heard it on an NPR report on Monday. I've started to notice several of my friends doing it. I even caught myself doing it the other day.

My hypothesis is that this is the ultimate fate of ending every sentence with "y'know?" I think that the speaker wants to make sure that the listener is following and doesn't disagree. Back in the 1980s, lots of people would use the interrogative "y'know?" at the end of sentences to provide that opportunity to check in, but now it seems to be done with just intonation.

But I have to say? This drives me nuts?

Y'know?

Review: Derashot Ledorot - A Commentary for the Ages on Genesis by Rabbi Norman Lamm

2012-11-13T01:03:52Z

Koren Publications has sent me a new book of theirs, Norman Lamm's Derashot Ledorot - A Commentary for the Ages on Genesis. I enjoyed it very much.

This book is a collection of divrei Torah (sermons) that Rabbi Lamm gave in the 1950s, '60s, and '70s when he was a pulpit rabbi. (For those who don't know the name, Rabbi Lamm is now the chancellor of Yeshiva University.) There are three sermons on each of the weekly parshiyot.

These sermons are very much a product of their time. The Jewish experience in mid-20th-centruy America was one full of tensions. There was the pull of assimilation; there was the struggle among the Conservative, Reform, and Orthodox communities to define what American Judaism would look like. There was the fight for civil rights in the South. You cannot read these without being strongly reminded of the upheaval the world was undergoing during those decade.

At the same time, these sermons are timeless. Rabbi Lamm writes well and powerfully. His topics are not fleeting; the details of the issues he grapples with may have changed, but fundamental human needs and Judaism's perspective on them haven't.

To his credit, the editor of this volume, Stuart Halpern, has not tried to modernize the sermons in any way. Rabbi Lamm's voice comes through, authentic and unfiltered. I am looking forward to the remaining volumes in the series.

Addendum to the Friedmann genealogy

2012-11-12T23:50:32Z

I forgot to include some "supporting evidence" in last night's post.

My grandmother's birth certificate (reissued):

Her father's death certificate (I don't know why there are three different verisons):

And his gravestone:

Chapter 2: The Friedmanns and (the recent generations of) the Erlangers

2012-11-12T02:47:53Z

We're going to switch over to my mom's side of the family now. And to keep things symmetric, since we started with my father's father, we'll start with my mother's mother, born Frieda Friedmann on 21 May 1911 in Nurenberg.

My grandmother's father, Hermann (1878-1931), was a kosher butcher, originally from Hüttenheim, in western Bavaria. From research that others have done, I know that his parents were Jonas Friedmann and Babette Ermanreuther, but I do not know anything beyond that about his family.

Hermann and Ella:

Ella:

My grandmother's mother was Ella Erlanger, born 28 July 1875 in Ichenhausen. Ichenhausen, a town in Bavaria, plays a big part in this narrative, as both sides of my mother's family originally were from there, and there is extensive documentation of the Bissinger, Erlanger, and Gerstle families. The website Jewish Genealogy in Bavarian Swabia has many of these records scanned and indexed.

Ella's parents were Gabriel Erlanger and Amalie Gerstle, who married on 7 May 1872 in Ichenhausen. The Gerstles were well documented by Karen Spiegel Franklin in her book Eleven Generations of the Gerstle Family. (I'm in the supplement.) Many of the facts below come from her book.

My grandmother had an older brother, Julius, born on 11 Sept. 1906 in Nurenberg. Here's a photo of him with my grandmother:

Julius married a woman named Emily Wölfel, who had a daughter Martha Wölfel from a previous relationship. Here's a photo of Emily:

Emily was not Jewish, and Julius was arrested by the Nazis for this fact. Although they divorced on 23 Jan 1941, it was too late to save him. He was deported to Terezin on his 36th birthday, 11 Sept. 1942, and from there to Auschwitz in Sept. 1944. He was murdered in Buchenwald on 1 Mar 1945.

My great-grandmother Ella was also deported to Terezin and died there on 5 May 1944.

So, at least for now, the Friedmann story is a short one.

Not so on the Erlanger side, though! For this posting, I'm going to focus on my great-grandmother Ella's siblings and their descendants; later on, I'll work my way up the Erlanger and Gerstle trees.

A reminder: In general, I'm omitting the names and other details of people who are still living, except when they already have a prominent public web presence, or if I hear from them that they give me permission to include their names in these blog entries. I have sent email messages to many people alluded to without names in this blog posting, and I hope to update it over the next few days as I receive permission to include more details.

Ella had seven siblings: Emma, Gustav, Samuel, Minna, Sophie, Sara, and Levi.

Emma was born in 1870. I don't know anything more than that.

Gustav was born 27 Jan 1873 and died 17 Jan 1874.

Samuel was born 30 May 1874 and died in 1937. He married a woman named Fanny Cohn and they had a daughter Erna who lived from 1907-1934.

Ella, my great-grandmother, was born 28 July 1875 and I described her above.

Minna was born 23 Nov 1877. She married Jacob Heinsfurther (1876-1925); they had two children: Sofie (1906-1960) and Gus (1912-1987).

Sofie married a man named Richard Rosenberg. I do not know his dates, nor do I know if they had any children.

Gus, who shortened his name to Hines, was a successful businessman; his wife's name was Hilde Guckenheimer (1917-2007). Their daughter Judy moved to London; her husband Clive Callman was knighted on the Queen's Birthday honours list this past June; Judy and Clive have a son and a daughter and various grandchildren, whose details I'm omitting because of my privacy policy. Gus and Hilde's son Jack continues to run the family businesses; he and his wife have two sons but more than that I don't currently know.

Sophie Erlanger was born 14 Jan 1879. She married Hermann Hoenlein (1878-1941); our best information is that she was murdered in Riga during the Holocaust.

Sophie and Hermann had three children: Minna (b. 1912), who married Fritz Nachmann (1907-2001); Minna and their two sons live in the Philadelphia area with their families. Minna Hoenlein was interned in the UK as a potential enemy alien in 1940, just as my grandfather was.

Sophie and Hermann's daughter Friedl (1913-?) married Walter Dachauer (dates unknown); their son was named Denny (1938-1942); all three were murdered in the Holocaust.

Sophie and Hermann's third child, Ephraim "Gus" Hoenlein (1914-1991), got out before the war and, in 1940, moved to Philadelphia and married Erna Simon (1915-2010). Gus and Erna had two sons, one of whom is Malcolm Hoenlein, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. (I'm omitting the name of Malcolm's brother and the details of their families per my privacy policy.)

Sara was born 30 Dec 1880 and died 24 Nov 1883.

Levi was born 6 Feb 1882. He married Hedwig Guttmann and they had three children: Gustav, Rosi, and Arnold. Levi and Hedwig were murdered during the Holocaust.

Gus made it to Chicago in the late 1930s and, according to the 1940 US Census, he lived with his cousin Henry Grunbaum. On 17 Jan 1942 in Chicago he married Greta Fisher; they had a daughter.

Rosi married Hans Schendel and moved to Israel, where they had two sons who still live there with their families.

Arnold survived Auschwitz and met Rosetta "Zet" Wolf Franken in the DP camps after the war; she had been widowed and had a young child. They married and moved to Australia, where Gus Hines helped them settle in. Arnold wrote a very moving biography, Choose Life, which starts by describing his childhood in Ichenhausen, then his experiences during the Holocaust, and then how he and Zet built a new life in Australia. Arnold adopted Zet's daughter, and they had two more daughters; all live in Australia.

Kristallnacht

2012-11-09T17:45:32Z

Today is the anniversary of "Kristallnacht". That, of course, was the Nazi's name for the pogrom that, for many, marks the beginning of the Holocaust.

I'm going to post three images. The first is a paragraph from my grandfather's "book". The second is a document from Dachau. The third is a photograph. I will translate the German as best as I can.

No. 221. Bissinger. Prittlbach

Prittlback, 22. December 1938

The salesman Leo Bissinger, ??? residing in Munich, Teugenstrasse 2/8,
is on the 16. December 1938 at 15 hours 30 minutes
in Prittlbach deceased.
The deceased was born on 8. February 1885
in Ichenhausen
Registry-office: Ichenhausen
Father: ___
Mother: ___
The deceased was ~~not~~ married, wife
unknown
Registered by ~~verbal~~ written records of the state
police of Munich

Above in ??? has been written
The Registrar
Gotter

Prittelbach, the 22 Dec. 1938

May his memory be a blessing.

Geneaology Chapter 1 part 3 (4?): The rest of the Greene story

2012-11-05T03:17:32Z

In this installment, we'll look at what happened to Ida and Barnett's children. For clarity, I'll tell each one's story in birth order.

Simon Elliot Greene

We've seen Simon's birth record from 14 Jan 1888 in Boston, Mass.; we saw him listed in the 1905 census as an "Office boy" at age 17 and in the 1910 census as a "Clerk." But in the 1915 census he was not listed in the Green household, and in the 1917 World War I draft card he listed as his dependents "Wife and mother and 2 children".

I had found a likely death record in the IGG index, for 23 May 1934. I ordered a copy of his death certificate from the NYC municipal archives, and it contained some key information: His wife's name was "Birdie" and his address when he died was 320 Riverside Drive. Also of interest was that his occupation was listed as "Retired salesman" and his cause of death was "Artherosclerosis, Coronart Artery Disease, Hypertension, Diabetes" of four years' duration. He is buried in Mount Neboh cemetery, same as his parents. I still haven't heard back from them on my inquiry of a few weeks ago, at this point I am going to give them another few weeks before re-inquiring.

Using "Birdie" as his wife's name, I did an Ancestry.com search. And I found a 1940 census record for Birdie Green, widow, and her son Irving.

Searching now for Irving as a possible son of Simon, I found a 1930 census record for 320 Riverside Drive for Simon and Bertie Greene and their son Erving, age 18:

As of this writing, I haven't found him in the 1915, 1920, or 1925 censuses. Nor have I found Erving's birth records; the IGG index only goes up to 1909.

So I have an open end here. I don't know what ever became of Birdie or Irving.

Here's the only picture I have of Simon:

Gerson "Joseph" Greene

Again, we have a great paper trail here: Gerson's birth records in Boston, census records up through 1920 -- albeit under a different name each time: Harris, AUgust, Gerson, Gershen, and Joseph. And through the IGG website, I'd determined that his date of death was 24 March 1929.

From the paperwork surrounding Ida's death (see previous post) I'd determined that Gerson obtained custody of his eleven-year-old brother Abe when their mother died, and took on the role of head of household of the siblings still living at home in the 1920 census.

So I thought I had the story pretty well covered. It was even clear that this is whom my father was named for: My father was Gerson Elliot Greene, born in 1936 and named in memory of the two oldest brothers who had served as father figures to my orphaned grandfather, and who had died in the years preceding his birth.

Imagine my shock, then, when I received a copy of great-uncle Gerson's death certificate from the NYC Municipal Archives and it listed him as married.

Unfortunately, the archives had made a mistake and they sent me the back of the preceding certificate in the book! So I had no clue for Gerson's wife's name!

But I did have a cemetery listing. Gerson was buried at Mount Carmel, which is one of the cemeteries whose records are searchable. I had searched for him before without luck, but this time I thought to search for all burials named Green* in March 1929, and there he was:

Of course. Yet another spelling: Gershon Greene. But now I knew his grave location, and I did a reverse search on that to find out who was buried with him:

Most of these names were familiar. Jean, Hattye, and Marion were three of his sisters (and more about them, in turn.) But who was Selma Greene?

Back to the IGG website. I now had some pretty specific parameters. I was looking for a marriage between Gerson (in some spelling) Greene (maybe without the final 'e') to a woman named Selma no earler than the 1920 census and no later then 1929.

and there in the middle was

Clicking through to the bride gave

and there we are: Selma Berkowitz.

Next, I went to the New York Times. In particular, I went to the advanced search, and searched for "Greene, Selma" in the timeframe of the week after her death, 19 Feb 1955. I downloaded the PDFs of all the "Obituary" articles in that time frame, and found this:

No mention at all of her late husband's family, and yet she is buried along with him and his sisters. What must the family dynamic have been?

And based on this, can I assume that they had no children of their own?

And why can't I find them in the 1925 New York census?

And this picture, which my grandmother labeled "Gerson and Dottie" (his sister) --- is it really Gerson and Selma? He died before she and Abe were married; how trustrworthy is her annotation written who knows how many years later?

Jennie / Jean Greene

Until a week ago, I had her story all worked out. Boston-born, so birth record was in hand. Lots of census evidence, a photo of her in later years, no indication that she'd ever been married.

Then, as I posted last week, I noticed that her last name was listed as Perkoff in her mother's probate paperwork, and I found that she'd been married for thirteen years before being widowed on her anniversary. I have no evidence that she ever had children, and as seen above, she's buried under her maiden name with her siblings, and not with her husband.

All I have left to add to this summary, then, is this photo of her:

Rachel (Ray) Greene

I'm going to beg off on details here, because this morning I had brunch with Ray's grandson, my second cousin, and he's going to send me updates. I will merely note the following: Ray was the first sibling born in New York, on 19 July 1892, and as I noted last week, her birth record has the unusual spelling Reitshell. She married David Joseph Sundel and they had two daughters.

One of their daughters, Mona, married Isidore "Cappy" Klein. Mona and Cappy couldn't make it to my bar mitzvah, but they did come by earlier that week to give me my present: my first Merriam-Webster's Collegiate dictionary. Those of you who know me can imagine how much I have valued this gift over the decades.

And as I said, until I get the rest of the story straight, I'm not going to include more in this posting. Suffice it to say that this branch of cousins we have been in contact with in an on-again-off-again way, and now I'm delighted that we're in touch again.

Dora (Dottye) Greene

Dora was born in 1894, according to the census estimates, but there's an IGG index listing for 28 Aug 1895, which is possible as well. She married Benjamin Tropp sometime between 1920 and 1925, based on the census listings, but I haven't found them in the IGG yet.

In the 1930 census they are listed as married, living in the Bronx, and hosting Dottye's sisters Jean and Hattye, but by 1940 they are living by themselves again.

Dottye died on 4 Jan 1948 and is buried with her siblings in section 2-1-6 of Mount Carmel cemetery. As far as I can tell, she and Ben never had any children; there are none mentioned in her New York Times death notice, which does enumerate which of the siblings survived her: Jean, Hattye, Ray, and Abe.

Ben lived until April 1977, and I do not know where he is buried.

This picture is marked "Ben Tropp and Jean Greene". Is it Jean, or is it Dottye?

Gussie Green

All I know about Gussie is that she was listed in the census records. The 1900 census listed her birth as July 1896, and she shows up all the way through the 1915 census. But she's not in the enumeration of children in Ida's probate paperwork in 1919, and I have not been able to find a death record for her.

Perhaps she married and died during that interval, and that's why I have nothing? Perhaps she's buried at Mount Neboh, and when I find the graves of Barnett (1917), Ida (1919), and Simon (1929) there, I'll find Gussie as well?

Until I learn more, though, she's just a cipher on the census ledgers.

Marion Greene

Ah, the mysterious and glamourous Marion. She was apparently a dancer (perhaps ballet?) who according to family lore was fairly successful in show business, although I haven't found any press clippings. Perhaps she performed under a stage name?

Here are two of the pictures we have of her:

She never married or had children. Family lore, again, claims she was head over heels in love with Eddie Fisher --- but I have no way to know if that was because she knew him or not.

"Family lore" also has it that she suffered from TB and was a patient at Saranac Lake; that is a subject for further research.

Marion died on 9 Nov 1947, based on the cemetery records, and is buried with her siblings in Mount Carmel cemetery. I have not found any other records of her death, such as a newspaper notice.

Hattye (Hannah?) Greene

Hattye is a bit of a mystery to me. She may have been born around 1905, if the later census records can be believed. But she may also be the same as Hannah, who was born in 1898. She may even be the same as "Henry", who appears in some of the census records with a birth year of 1898 or 1899.

She died on 17 May 1962 and is buried with her siblings at Mount Carmel cemetery.

As far as I know, she never married or had children. We have a couple of pictures of her labelled "Hattye with 'friend'" but I don't know how to interpret the scare quotes around "friend":

Sarah Greene

Born in Jan 1900, according to the 1900 census, but not findable in the IGG index. Listed in the 1905 census as age 5. Still alive when Abe was born, based on the number of surviving older siblings entered on his birth certificate. And then gone after that.

Abraham Greene

Finally, the baby of the family, my grandfather, Abe. Born 4 Feb 1906 in Manhattan, you've seen his early paper trail already: the birth certificate, the census records, the custody paperwork when Ida died.

In 1929, Abe married my grandmother, Rosalie Wertheim. They had two sons, my uncle (whom they named after Abe's father) and my father (who, as I showed above, was named for Abe's two eldest brothers).

Abe passed away in 1975. I'll have a lot more to say about his and Rosalie's life later on in this narrative.

Summary

Here's a summary of the vital statistics for this generation:

NAME           BORN        DIED        YAHRZEIT   SPOUSE            CHILDREN
Simon Elliot   1888.01.14  1934.05.23   9 Sivan   Birdie            Irving
Gerson Joseph  1889.02.15  1929.03.24  13 Adar    Selma Berkovitz   ---
Jean           1890.02     1957.07.21  22 Tamuz   Morris Perkoff    ---
Rachel         1892.07.19  ????                   David Sundel      Iris, Mona
Dottye         1895.08.28? 1948.01.04  22 Tevet   Benjamin Tropp    ---
Gussie         1896.07     1915-1919?             ---               ---
Marion         1898.01.12  1947.11.09  26 Heshvan ---               ---
Hattye         1905?       1962.05.17  13 Iyar    ---               ---
Sarah          1900.01     1906-1910?             ---               ---
Abraham        1906.02.04  1975.09.11   6 Tishre  Rosalie Wertheim  Barry, Gerson

Conclusion

This is the last part of "Chapter One", the story of the Green(e) family from their arrival on these shores, with the exception of what happened to my grandfather after he married my grandmother.

There are still some gaps in my knowledge. There are some small onese listed in these four posts, but the biggest one remains: What was my family's name in the "old country"? For that matter, what was the old country?

Some paperwork that might help to shed light on these questions would be Barnett's naturalization paperwork. I've found a few "Barnett Green"s so far, but none seem to be the right one. I'm hoping that the naturalization paperwork, or just some more sleuthing, might help me find their passenger list, or at least what port they arrived at.

If I can't find that for Barnett and Ida, might I be able to find it for Fanny Levin, Ida's mother? Another open issue with great-great-grandmother Fannie is when did she die and where is she buried?

And who was Ginsberg?

Next time, we'll set my father's lineage aside for a while and take up the story of my mother's family.

Interlude: Genealogical methods: a case study

2012-10-28T12:14:10Z

A brief interlude on methodology. I found something mildly interesting last night; this post is about how I tracked it down. It was a chance to combine tools from four different websites and is a great example of how this sort of genealogical research is a lot like solving a puzzle.

I was sifting through my document scans, selecting which ones to use to illustrate my blog post and editing them to crop and highlight them to emphasize the relevant points. I got to the probate document for Ida Green; specifically, the page that listed her surviving children:

At the time, I added a surprised note to my blog entry: This is another source of addresses, and it has some new information: Jennie apparently was married and her last name was Perkoff!

This is the "Oh, my!" moment that starts the ball rolling. I have one new datum: So now what do I do with that information?

First, I went to Ancestry.com and added a spouse to Jennie's record. I didn't have a first name, so I just entered "Perkoff" and hoped for one of their little animated leaf icons to appear. No such luck.

Next, I reviewed my census data, and saw that in 1910 Jennie was still living at home. So I had a bracket on when she was married.

I went to the Italian Genealogical Group site, and searched for grooms with the last name Perkoff, between 1910 and 1920:

There was only one match:

and clicking through to the bride's record confirmed that this was the right one:

Now I had his first name, Morris, and a date of the marriage, 3 Jan 1912. I added those to Ancestry.com.

Now, Ancestry.com had enough to work with. It got me the census records from 1915 for Morris and Jennie, living in the same neighborhood as in the address listed in Ida's probate paperwork. (I'm always looking for confirmation in the details that I have the right records.) Ancestry also found a World War I draft registration card for Morris, which again had the address and Jennie listed as his wife.

And Ancestry.com found Morris's naturalization petition, from 4 Nov 1916. A few interesting details came out from this, besides more addresses.

First, here's the section of the form with the character witnesses:

Oh, my! There's my great-uncle, Gerson Greene, with profession listed as Contractor and an address on Bedford Ave. Gerson, of course, was Jennie's brother and therefore Morris's brother-in-law.

And the second witness is Isidore Ginsberg, which is suggestive of the Isaac Ginsberg that I discussed in my last post.

I'm also amused by the following detail. Pay close attention to the dates when the form was originally filled out and when it was approved, and the struck-out reference and what replaces it:

Here's Russian history, documented in my great-aunt's husband's naturalization paperwork in Brooklyn.

So what happened to Morris? Why didn't we know about him?

A search for a death record in the Italian Genealogical Group site came up empty; so did FamilySearch.org.

But I know that Jennie is buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, so I decided to search for Morris's grave there:

And that gives me a date of death, which completes the narrative. It doesn't explain why Jennie isn't buried in the same section of the cemetery, or why she didn't keep the name Perkoff.

So I thought I was done telling this story, but then I searched for their record in the 1920 census to fill in the details:

There are Morris and Jennie Perkoff, but -- oh, my! -- they're listed as boarders living in the home of David and Pearl Sundel. Jennie's sister Rachel married a David Sundel (a fact which I was planning to get to in the next installment), but I never knew of her as a "Pearl" before. In fact, based on Ancestry's transcription of the 1925 census, I had listed her in my database as "Rachel R. Greene."

But when I zoom way in on that 1925 New York census,

I think it's actually a P, conjoined with the descender of the J from the line above. Which would make her "Rachel Pearl", perhaps.

"I would love to have a copy of her birth record," I thought, "but I keep coming up with either too many possibilities or none." But now I had a better fix on the year and I knew the Greens lived in Manhattan when she was born, so I went back to the IGG site and searched for all births in Manhattan named Green with a first initial R in 1892. And I saw something completely unexpected:

Oh, my! Now that is an inspired spelling for "Rachel." Could I confirm it?

I went back to FamilySearch.org and simply searched for all records with the name Reitshell Green. And I found this: it's the same record, Reitshell Green born 19 Jul 1892 in Manhattan, with parents listed as Barnatt Green and Ida Smith.

Not only is "Reitshell" an original spelling for "Rachel," but in all the variations of "Barnett" that I've seen, "Barnatt" is a new one, and "Ida Smith" is neither "Ida Green" nor "Ida Levin" nor "Ida Levine". My guess is someone filling out the form had no idea what her maiden name is and didn't want to leave it blank.

So that's where I called it a night. In about 15 minutes I had learned that my "spinster" great-aunt had actually been married and was widowed on her eleventh wedding anniversary. I corrected the middle name and found the birthdate of another of my great-aunts. I got amused by the first Russian Revolution.

But, really, "Reitshell"?