Updating the Family Tree Association Book for My Cousins

 
In 2013, I scanned the meeting minutes from my grandma Minnie's Farkas Family Tree association. The minutes covered tree meetings from 1933 to 1964. This was a six-month project of scanning, sometimes retyping, also annotating, inserting a directory of who's who, adding the tree's official constitution (two versions LOL), a couple of group photos with captions, and more.

Crucially, I painstakingly created a detailed index. Without an index, this is just a doorstop. With an index, it's a super-useful resource for family history that will be passed down because it's easy to locate the mentions of every ancestor named in the book.

At the time, I printed a few spiral-bound copies (1.5 inches thick, as shown above) for cousins who were especially interested. Soon afterward, I scanned the 500 pages in pdf format, then mailed it out on a USB flash drive to each of my second cousins.

Now, 13 years later, one of my second cousins is asking about this volume. And instead of sending out a USB right away, I'm updating the book in two ways.

First, I'm fine-tuning the index to reflect what I've learned since 2014. Above is one of the handwritten notes I made a few years ago when I discovered the exact relationship of Bela Roth. He was actually a brother-in-law of my great-grandma Lena. Changes like this improve accuracy and may even provoke new memories from my cousins who read through.

Second, I'm updating my list of "who's who" showing which ancestors were the founding members, who their spouses were, who their children were, who their children married. Since 2014, a few of these people have passed away and sadly, I needed to insert death dates. 

When finished, this gigantic volume will be ready to again be sent electronically or via mailed USB flash drives to cousins. Also, I will tape a USB to the printed book on my bookshelf, just in case. 

My ancestors had the inspired idea of keeping minutes of every monthly meeting and then having these minutes bound into books to be saved and passed down. The least I can do is to keep alive the memories of these people and the family tree association they created and loved so much by sharing the book with cousins. Again!

Mind the Gap: Alex and Blanche Married Far from Family

I've wondered about the marriage of my 1c2r Alexander Roth (1893-1949), related to me via my great-grandmother's Kunstler family. Alex was a son of Sali Kunstler Roth and Bela Bernard Roth, Blanche was a daughter of Frank Schwartz and Freida Klein Schwartz.

Both had immigrated from Hungary with their parents, settling in New York City in the early 1900s. 

Mind the gap

Alex was enumerated as living with his parents on East 19th Street in New York City until the 1920 US Census. Then a gap of 11 years. The next record I found was his name in a Boston city directory from 1931, married to Blanche Schwartz (1892?-1986). 

Blanche was enumerated with her parents in Jewish East Harlem, New York City in the 1915 New York State Census. Then a gap of 16 years. The next record I could find showed her as the wife of Alex in that Boston directory of 1931. 

Marriage in "the gap"

Clearly, Alex and Blanche married during the gap years where I couldn't seem to find any documentation of their whereabouts.

Knowing that different websites use different indexing and search algorithms, I recently redid my research using MyHeritage--and immediately discovered where and when the couple got married during the gap. I followed the link to obtain a scan of the original license/certificate (shown at top), which is housed on FamilySearch but didn't pop up when I searched that site several times. 

Why California?

Why Alex and Blanche married in Los Angeles, 2,800 miles from their parents and siblings, I can't even imagine. The Roth family was heavily into the garment district of New York City, so perhaps Alex was scouting Los Angeles for business opportunities in clothing. That's a guess, only a guess. 

Blanche had experience sewing neckties in the Big Apple. In fact, she may have worked for an uncle who owned a necktie factory in the garment district (my grandma Minnie worked for that same Roth gentleman before she got married). Still, how and why Blanche made the trip to Los Angeles and then married Alex in LA is a total mystery.

I note that Blanche and Alex were married by Rabbi Mayer Winkler, who headed up the Conservative synagogue Congregation Sinai in Los Angeles. Did this factor into their thinking? Nobody knows. I'm just glad I was able to locate their marriage record. 

Thinking of Blanche, who was born on February 3d, and of Alex, her husband for 26 years until his death in 1949.

Ancestry "AI Stories" in Beta

Another new feature just showed up in an email sent to me by Ancestry: AI Stories, in which added info is provided to help us understand the background of a particular document. 

UPDATE: There is another way to see AI Stories, see bottom of this post. Easiest way to access AI Stories is through an email announcing the availability of such hints. So be sure to watch your email for any Ancestry hint messages. When I clicked through, the hint itself appears on the right of the screen, with the document on the left. 

In my case, the document being described in an audio narrative is about my paternal grandma Henrietta Mahler Burk crossing the border from Canada to the United States, enroute from Montreal south to New York City. 

The written description and audio incorrectly state that Henrietta and her children are going to Montreal, when in fact this is a US immigration document about going from Montreal through Vermont to travel to her mother in New York City. Below is the actual source citation, clearly described as "From Canada to US"

The audio correctly identifies Henrietta as she is shown on the manifest, and links her to her mother, the relative she will be joining in New York City, as well as to her husband, Isaac Burk, who she left in Montreal. 

Below this initial audio and written narrative are other written AI Stories designed to help me "explore what shaped their life." Here's one:

The explanatory details about cross-border movement and documentation were interesting and I found this background helpful as a refresher. I see that the footnote only refers to the particular document, not the source of this historical background.

I will continue to look at AI Stories but not listen as I think I can glean the key details about a document more quickly by reading than by listening.

With luck, the "Ideas" beta will spread more widely and so will "AI Stories" in beta, so readers can share their experiences!

UPDATE: AI Stories can be accessed from the record page of a document in your hints or attached to an ancestor. They are not yet available for every record. Below, an image of a document record page that has the notation Listen and Explore. That leads to the AI Stories page for this particular record. I like the background for these records more than listening to a "story" about the ancestor in the record. See what you think!

MORE about AI Stories can be read in the Ancestry announcement here.

Randy Seaver wrote about this feature in beta here.

Happy Birthday to the 19th Century McClure Twins

 
On this day in 1875, fraternal twins Jesse and Bessie McClure were born. They were the youngest children of Train Caldwell McClure and Gulia Swain McClure. Jesse and Bessie were my husband's first cousins, twice removed.

The McClure line has few multiple births, so Jesse and Bessie stand out. Unfortunately, no birth records exist to indicate which twin was born first. 

Jesse McClure worked in the paper and printing industry all his life. At the age of 25, he married dressmaker Elnora "Eleanor" Ross, in 1900. Ten years later, they moved to Everett, Washington for his work. Elnora died of a stroke in 1944; Jesse died in 1952. 

Bessie McClure married Judson Deveny, a tailor, in 1897. They had a daughter, Ruth, before divorcing. Bessie married real estate agent Guy Cockley in 1903, and he helped raise Ruth. Guy died of heart disease in 1934; Bessie died from pneumonia 25 years later, in 1959. Both Bessie and Guy are buried in Falls Cemetery, Wabash, Indiana, where her headstone reads "Mother" and his reads "Dad."

Thinking of the McClure twins on the 151st anniversary of their birth.

Ancestry "Ideas" in Beta

Ancestry is trying something new, offering AI-generated "ideas" for researching an ancestor on your family tree. If you have this feature, now in beta, it will be on the top menu. Look to the right of the ancestor's name,  next to the search button on that profile. I first noticed it on Wed, Jan 28 (it had disappeared by Sat, Jan 31 but then reappeared on Feb 1).

I tried "Ideas" for several ancestors that I've researched extensively.

As shown above, the "ideas" for my husband's great aunt consisted of (1) search for the marriage record, (2) trace the ancestor's residences, and (3) locate her death cert. 

Since the marriage cert is attached as a source and in the gallery, nothing new there. Since every US Census available for this ancestor is reflected in her profile, nothing new there. Not shown in the image above but on my tree is this ancestor's death cert as a source. Nothing new there.

Interestingly, "ideas" come with the offer of a detailed action plan. At left, an explanation of why a marriage record is important (this example is from a different ancestor) and suggestions for searching for missing marriage records. (This ancestor's marriage record is listed as a source on the profile and the scan of the cert is in the gallery, by the way.)

Ancestry knows the idea to search online for a marriage index is "beginner-friendly" which I suspect is meant to encourage beginners to go ahead and search.

The next two suggestions (look for a county marriage registration and look for local newspaper marriage announcements) are a bit more advanced and clearly good recommendations.

I note that this AI action plan includes the idea to search in FamilySearch, Ancestry, and MyHeritage! Good suggestion.

My initial reaction is that the AI suggestions don't reflect what is attached to a tree and what is missing. Also these ideas are rather basic for someone with a bit of experience. Maybe this feature will be improved as the beta testing continues?

My next step is to test the AI "ideas" feature with ancestors who are not as well documented. Stay tuned!

Do you have Ancestry "ideas" and if so, what do you think?

UPDATE Jan 31: This beta feature was only on one of my three main Ancestry trees. When I turned on my computer today, it had disappeared from that tree and is not yet available on any other tree. 

UPDATE Feb 1: Beta feature "Ideas" reappeared but on a different tree.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

On this day in 1945, Auschwitz was finally liberated. 

On this day in 2026, I want to honor the memory of relatives of my maternal grandfather, Theodore Schwartz (1887-1965) who were, very sadly, killed during the Holocaust. 

Their surnames were Schwartz, Simonowitz, Winkler, Stark, Zeller, Bimbi, Rezenbach, Feldman. 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is today. Never forget, never forgotten.

A new, free collection of Holocaust records, from the Arolsen Archives, was just added to Ancestry, along with US Holocaust Museum records and USC Shoah Foundation recordes. Search for free here.

Less Paper But Not Paperless Family History

I'm nearly done shredding the unneeded printouts in my genealogy files. You know, from the days when we cranked microfilm by hand and then printed or photographed something useful for family history? Or made notes while researching at a library? Or filed copies for some unknown reason?

Today just about everything is attached to my online family trees (Census records, birth/marriage/death certificates, links to burial places, other sources, and so on). I have family trees posted on multiple genealogy websites, because LOCKSS (lots of copies keep stuff safe).

Not paperless but less paper

My physical files are much skinnier but I am not going paperless. Here's a quick and incomplete list of what I'm saving, filed by surname or intermarried family groups:

• Original vital records (certificates have been scanned and uploaded to family trees but originals were paid for and I'm leaving them in my files)
• Letters and notes from relatives about family history (sadly I didn't date all, but these have good first-hand memories of ancestors and guesstimates of dates/places, including some hand-drawn family trees)
• Printouts or originals of hard-to-obtain documents (non-US documents for instance)
• Printouts of family trees and genealogies from relatives who have documented other parts of my ancestral background (not good enough to scan maybe, but good enough to consult now and then)
• Pending (I'm waiting waiting waiting for answers to my appeals of FOIA info from the US Veterans Administration, for example)
• Deeds of gift (for items donated to repositories, as when my Sis and I donated our aunt Dorothy's WAC memorabilia)
• PHOTOS (originals and, yes, copies, if any have notes or are marked up in some way)

Why retain paper? 

When I began my genealogy journey in 1998, the main resources were documents and photos passed down to me. They survived decades in print and with care (archival boxes, for instance) they will survive to be passed down for decades in the future. 

I do not want to entrust my entire family history to a paperless existence. I've created printed booklets, professional photo books, and other types of projects to supplement all my online genealogy info. My designated heirs will get files and boxes, stripped down to the essentials so they can keep these artifacts from our family's history alive for the sake of descendants in the future. 

My heirs will also get my passwords to access my genealogy sites, plus a bit of money to continue subscriptions for a year or two in case they want to look at or add to the trees or noodle around on these sites without having to worry about the cost. Thank you to those in the future who will carry on where I leave off!

Book Review: "The Road That Made America" by James Dodson

 

In the mid-1730s, my husband's McClure family (so-called Scots-Irish) sailed across the Atlantic and landed in Philadelphia. They then made their way south to Virginia to settle down and farm. They were among the many immigrants who, over time, walked the Great Wagon Road. 

No wonder I was drawn to the recent nonfiction book by James Dodson, The Road That Made America.

Subtitled "A modern pilgrim's journey on the Great Wagon Road," this well-written book is both popular history and memoir--an informative and irresistible combination.

A professional writer with deep ancestral roots along the GWR, Dodson often heard his father and other relatives tell stories about earlier generations who walked this road and settled nearby. Eventually, he decides to explore the areas suspected to be part of the road, driving his vintage station wagon through six states over the course of several years.

Dodson visits historians, reenactors, scholars, and locals who speak of family history, local heroes, colorful characters, and important places entwined with events that shaped America, such as the battle of Paoli. 

Dodson also discusses his family's history, including the unproven but persistent legend that his great-grandmother was Native American and adopted into the family. The author never mentions any DNA testing, but I do hope he tests so he can figure out whether there is any basis for this family lore.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Dodson and was pleased to see that he came away with new insights that enriched his life. No index, unfortunately, but an extensive bibliography for readers like me who want to learn more about the Great Wagon Road and its impact on the peoples of America, then and now.

Recommended reading, especially in this year of America 250 celebrations.

Reading the Signature to Confirm a Name

 

When my husband's 2d cousin Alice E. Wood (1918-1990) married William Smyth (1914-1994) in 1936, the marriage license showed her name as Alice Eleanor Wood. See it circled in red at top of this image? 

Circled in red at bottom of that image, her name was again shown as Alice Eleanor Wood. This was written by Toledo, Lucas county, Ohio officials after the wedding had taken place on September 1, 1936. 

BUT that's not how Alice herself spelled her name. Her signature read: Alice Elinor Wood. I circled Elinor in blue on the image above. 

Her name appears as Alice Elinor on other official documents, including her Social Security application. And her headstone shows her name as Elinor A. 

One Census document shows "Elinore" and one shows "Alice E" but two others show "Eleanor." Since Census enumerators rarely asked how to spell a name when listing someone on the population schedule, I don't put much weight on any which way they spell anything 😛

Unfortunately, "Eleanor" was officially on this marriage license so that's the way the name is officially indexed. But my tree (and some others) show her as "Elinor." 

How Did Sam Schwartz Meet His Second Wife?

 
On January 12, 1945, my great uncle Samuel Schwartz (1883-1954) married his second wife, Margaret Lazar Simon (1894-1976). Both had been born in Hungary, and both were widowed in 1940, just weeks apart. Sam was the older brother of my maternal grandpa, Theodore Schwartz.

I wondered how Sam and Margaret met each other. My Schwartz family didn't know much about her except they told me when Sam died suddenly, Margaret didn't hand any Schwartz heirlooms or photos over to his family. Nothing at all, according to Sam's two grandchildren, who were very disappointed.

By looking at the address where each was enumerated in the 1940 US Census, I can clearly see that Margaret and Sam were neighbors in Queens, New York. They lived in apartment buildings literally right around the corner from each other. Map above shows a two minute walk from one building to the other.

Margaret's apartment building was a six-story brick structure seen in the New York City tax photos here. Sam's apartment building can be seen in same database here.

So I imagine that Sam met Margaret in the neighborhood, or perhaps in a local store, etc. Later they moved to what was called a "private house" in New York-ese: not an apartment but a one- or two-family home. 

Thinking of Sam and Margaret on this anniversary of their marriage in 1945. 

Background on The Bronx, Where My Grandparents Settled

Even though I was born in the Bronx and own several books about the history of the Bronx, I'm always interested in more background about this part of New York City. 

This week, I took a look at Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898-1918, by Mike Wallace. The New York Times reviewed the book here. It is a massive tome, nearly 1,200 pages long, and filled with great context about the fast-moving expansion and profound changes in the Big Apple during an important period of development. After reading a chapter or two, I realized I would get more out of checking the index for my specific area of interest: The Bronx.

Not too much of Bronx history actually turns up in Wallace's book, but the bit of material I did find was enough to flesh out more family history context. 

Twenty years of head-spinning change

On the very first day of 1898, Manhattan and Brooklyn (already the country's first and fourth-largest cities) were legally consolidated with Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx to form the modern New York City we know today. 

Soon the construction of multiple elevated and underground subway systems would put the heart of the city within affordable and convenient reach of the "outer boroughs" (meaning everything other than Manhattan). Combined with technological and electoral changes, not to mention societal changes and historic events both local and global, the period of 1898-1918 made New York City into a formidable business, employment, housing, and political power. 

Immigrants move out of the Lower East Side

This was the booming metropolis where Ellis Island immigrants entered the United States. And these were the years when my immigrant maternal grandparents (Hermina Farkas and Theodore Schwartz) met, married, began a family, and moved out of lower Manhattan to settle in the Bronx, less than an hour's ride by subway from the business districts in midtown and downtown Manhattan. 

No car was needed in those days of cheap mass transit (my Schwartz grandparents never had one, nor did my parents). But if residents had a car, they could enjoy the view on rolling, beautiful parkways as well as driving down the elegant Grand Concourse.

As the book points out, a tremendous housing boom (of affordable apartment buildings in particular) helped attract tens of thousands of residents to the Bronx. My Schwartz grandparents first rented an apartment in a big building on Brown Place, then moved to an apartment on Fox Street, all at the Southern end of the Bronx. 

The extremely rapid growth required more infrastructure, year after year. Bronx groups lobbied for--and ultimately achieved--county status, which came with additional resources. In addition to continued residential and business development, the Bronx as a county enjoyed "home rule" of a sort.

From bucolic to built up

My Dad (Harold Burk, 1909-1978) used to tell stories of his family planning a daylong picnic outing from Manhattan to the Bronx, up to World War I at least. Dad and his immigrant parents, two sisters, and younger brother would escape the summer heat and crowds by boarding a bus or subway to ride to the upper tip of Manhattan, then getting on a horse-drawn wagon to spend a few hours in a green field somewhere in the bucolic Bronx. 

But after World War I, I suspect the Burk family cooled off in one of the big planned Bronx parks, quiet oases of grass and trees. In fact, my paternal grandparents (Isaac Burk and Henrietta Mahler Burk) moved to the Bronx by 1930, settling in an apartment building close to a big park. When grown, three of their four children lived in Bronx apartments (one defected to an apartment in Queens).

Thus, my Schwartz and Burk ancestors were part of the major population shift that quickly pushed the Bronx over one million residents and made it into an "instant city," to borrow a phrase from author Mike Wallace.

Greater Gotham added a smidge of color and context to my knowledge of my ancestors. This is my post for Amy Johnson Crow's week 2 prompt, "A Record That Adds Color," from her 2026 edition of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.

My Top 5 Blog Posts of 2025

Looking back on the year just ended, here are the five most popular blog posts I wrote in 2025. 

1. Genealogy bloggers on BlueSky. So many genealogy folks have begun posting on the BlueSkyplatform that I wanted to gather, in one place, their blog links. The list contains links to 115 genealogy-related blogs!
2. Augusta Sarah Markell's short life. This post was popular, I think, because a newly-created Find a Grave memorial gave me the critical clue I needed to learn about a little girl who didn't appear in Census records. A reminder to revisit research and redo searches because new stuff appears all the time.
3. Change, monitor, hands off? Many people rely on and contribute to the collaborative FamilySearch family tree. However, knowing that anyone can change any ancestor, I wrote about my decisions to change or monitor or just leave it alone, inspired by a blog post from James Tanner.
4. Full-text surprise: Divorce papers! I was noodling around in FamilySearch's full-text search function, plugging in names of various ancestors, when up popped a link to unindexed but discoverable legal documents, including the contentious divorce initiated by hubby's brave grandma in 1901. Wow.
5. Back up your family history! This post showed, step by step, how to download a gedcom copy of a family tree from Ancestry, MyHeritage, and WikiTree. It seems a lot of people wanted to try out these download procedures. Or maybe it was the exclamation point that drew attention?!!

Thank you to my wonderful readers for stopping by and sometimes leaving comments. I really appreciate you!

Entering My 28th Year of Genealogy

In 2026, I'm entering my 28th year as family historian and genealogy enthusiast. 

The genealogy bug first bit me in 1998, when the family historian of my mother's generation asked me a simple question about my father's father. Um, I barely knew Grandpa Isaac Burk's name, certainly not when and where he was born or died. But I became determined to find out and what an adventure that was.

Since then, I've had a wonderful time teaming up with my cousins around the world to learn more about my mother's side of the tree (Farkas, Kunstler, and Schwartz families), as well as my father's side of the tree (Burk, Jacobs, and Mahler families).

It's not a secret that I truly 💘 in-laws. This year I created a colorful booklet about the Pietroniro family, in-laws on my hubby's side of the tree. Then younger relatives chimed in with their fond memories and I reprinted the booklet to include what they had to say, in detail.

I continue to improve and/or create memorials on FindaGrave, WikiTree, Fold3, and the usual big genealogy sites. This is cousin bait and a good way to share what I know with relatives and other researchers. I also enjoy participating in some of Amy Johnson Crow's #52Ancestors challenges, as well as WikiTree Connect-a-Thons and genealogy chats on Bluesky. 

During 2025, I made three in-person genealogy presentations and many more virtual presentations, including a free Virtual Genealogy Association talk about cousin bait. Plus, my sis and I presented two programs about identical and fraternal twins (something we know a lot about, being the twin daughters of a twin).

In addition, this year I had professional shadowboxes made for Dad's World War II memorabilia and Mom's childhood jewelry (with her twin sister's as well). These archival-quality frames will keep the artifacts and the stories safe for the future.

Looking ahead, I plan to move old original photos from archival boxes to archival albums. Just about everything has been digitized but now I want to better organize the loose photos for the sake of future generations. I stalled out on this project a couple of years ago, so 2026 will be my year of archival albums. 

Now I have another bite-sized family history photo book in mind for 2026, about my parents and my siblings. This will be a great opportunity to tell my own story in context! 😊

Finally, I want to do something with the letters written from folks in England who met my aunt Dorothy, the WAC, when she was posted there during World War II. These kind people took the time to write Dorothy's parents. I've been in touch with a gentleman who is distantly related to the letter-writers, and he is tracing a direct descendant. If that doesn't work out, I will donate the letters to a museum or historical society in 2026.

Wishing you all the best in this new year.

Happy New Year 2026!

 

In the first two decades of the 20th century, my husband's Wood family in Ohio received penny greeting postcards from relatives for every occasion. 

Nearly every postcard was printed in Germany and they remain as colorful today as they looked more than a century in the past.

Here's one of my favorites to wish you and your loved ones the best of health, a bit of good luck, and maybe even a bag of gold coins in 2026.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks or 12 Ancestors in 12 Months - 2026 Edition

Amy Johnson Crow just announced the new 2026 genealogy prompts for her long-running series, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. 

As in the past, she also offers the alternative 12 Ancestors in 12 Months, where participants instead choose a dozen prompts and write about a dozen ancestors during 2026.

The full list of prompts, month by month, is available here.

I really enjoy the variety of themes and find Amy's prompts both inspiring and thought-provoking. Although I don't blog about all of her prompts, I consider them great starting points for a fresh perspective on my family history activities. 

I also enjoy browsing what participants write about each week's theme on Amy's free Facebook page.

Take a look! Maybe some of Amy's prompts will inspire you in 2026.