Wordless (Almost) Wednesday: July 16, 1947

For years I wondered about this photo, dated July 16, 1947, taken in Montreal. Why were my newlywed parents (Harold Burk and Daisy Schwartz) in Montreal? Who was the young man on the right?

Now, 67 years later, I have some answers. It turns out that the young man is Dad's first cousin William, who lived in Montreal.

William was a son of Abraham Burke, while Harold was a son of Abraham's brother, Isaac Burk. (Sometimes their last name was spelled Berk.)

William was at my parents' 1946 wedding in New York City and months later, when Mom and Dad visited Montreal to see the Burke/Berk family, William took them to this fun restaurant. In fact, his daughter has this exact photo!

Mom in the South Bronx on Friday the 13th

My cousin just sent me this photo of my mother and her twin sister, with their aunt Rose, who often babysat for them.

It was taken on Friday the 13th, in July of 1923. (I know because the date is written on the back.)

Grandpa Teddy Schwartz and his wife, Grandma Minnie Farkas Schwartz, ran a small dairy store in the neighborhood, so relatives like Rose helped look after the twins and their older brother during the long hours when the store was open.

Fox Street and the South Bronx in general at that time were usually safe, although my Grandpa's store did get robbed once, during the Depression, on Thursday, December 16, 1937. Here's the story as published in the New York Times:

Band Robs 3 Stores

Three Armed Men Get $300 in Series of Bronx Raids

Three armed men within an hour and a half held up three store-keepers in the Bronx last night and escaped with $300. About 9:30 o'clock they entered the grocery store of Theodore Schwartz at 679 Fox Street, hit him on the head with a pistol butt when he resisted and took $50. Half an hour later they went into the grocery store of Louis Lepperman at 422 Jackson Avenue and hit him with a pistol, but left quickly without taking anything when his wife screamed from a back room. In another half an hour, they forced Leonard Gaglio and his brother, Milton, liquor dealers at 1012 Morris Park Avenue, into a back room and took $250. 

Probably Grandpa Teddy's worst ordeal came when he had to come home and explain the loss of the hard-earned $50 to Grandma Minnie!

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks #24: Sam "Born on 4th of July" Schwartz & Anna Gelbman

Photo taken at Beldegreen Studios on Avenue C in NY's Lower East Side, 1909

My great-uncle Sam Schwartz (Grandpa Theodore Schwartz's brother) was born in Ungvar, Hungary on the 4th of July in 1883. His original name was Simon but for unknown reasons, he became Samuel when he arrived in New York City in January, 1904, a 20-year-old man trained as a printer.

Sam wasted no time declaring his intention to petition for citizenship in May, 1904. In 1905, he lived as a boarder in the Lower East Side apartment of the Grossman family, at 82 Avenue D. That's the same apartment building where Sam's younger brother Teddy (hi Grandpa!) lived not long afterward.

By 1906, Sam had moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he sold vegetables until he found work as a printer. In October, 1909, Sam became a full-fledged U.S. citizen--and a week later, he married Anna Gelbman (1886-1940), the American-born daughter of a shoemaker from Miskolc, Hungary. Anna's family lived only a short walk from the field in central Bridgeport where P.T. Barnum wintered his circus, elephants and all.

Sam and Anna moved back to New York City by 1915 and in the 1920s, he went into business running Norwood Dairy, a Queens grocery store, with his brother-in-law, Louis Frish (married to Anna's sister Belle). Sadly, his beloved Anna died from cancer in 1940. Sam remarried to a lady named Margaret. Unfortunately, he had a fatal heart attack while mowing his lawn on a hot day in 1954.

On Independence Day I salute my Great Uncle Sam, born on this day 131 years ago, and his gentle wife Anna.

Tuesday's Tip: Index Your Ancestors' Documents!

If you're lucky enough to have more than a few pages of documents inherited from your ancestors' lives, my number one tip is: Index them!

Otherwise, future generations won't know who's mentioned where--and they might not take the time to read all the way through.

With an index, they can look up individuals quickly and easily. And for family history researchers, the index gives us extra help seeing connections between people, events, dates. See my sample format for indexing here.

I have three sets of documents that have been passed down in the family:

1. Farkas Family Tree reports and minutes. My mother's family accumulated 500 pages of meeting minutes from the 30 years of the Farkas Family Tree, a family association that began in 1933. I scanned 'em all, read 'em all, and then prepared an index listing every person mentioned. It took a while, but above you can see the results. Mr. & Mrs. B, the first family members listed in the index, were only at one meeting, June 1946. Others in that family were mentioned numerous times, as shown in this index. Who could resist looking up their parents' or grandparents' or first cousins' names? That's the allure and advantage of an index.
2. Father-in-law Edgar J. Wood's diaries. For decades, Edgar Wood kept a brief diary with 1-3 sentences per day. I indexed every family and friend mentioned in the diaries, including names that were unfamiliar. Eventually, cross-referencing the entries led me and my husband to be able to identify cousins and pinpoint the exact relationships between most of the folks named. Without indexing, we wouldn't have connected the dots between people discussed in multiple entries. 
3. Letters to Mom during the 1930s/40s. I have transcribed these dozens of letters and will index these soon. Preparing a time line based on the index will help me follow friends and relatives during the years after Mom (Daisy Schwartz) graduated high school and before she married Dad (Harry Burk).

I know I groan when I see a collection of documents on Family Search or Ancestry that is NOT indexed. With an index, I can do a quick search. It's the same with our family documents. I want those who come after me to dip into these documents, so now they're indexed, with a bit of explanation about who's who. Plus it helps me to be able to quickly look up someone as I research that part of the family.

Matrilineal Monday: Where Grandma Minnie and Cousin Margaret Got Married

In 1911, my maternal grandma, Hermina Farkas married my grandpa, Theodore Schwartz, at the 8-10 Clinton Street Synagogue on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Here's their marriage cert. Note the name of the top witness: Marcus Aronoff.

This same gentleman witnessed the marriage of Grandma Minnie's first cousin Margaret to husband Herman in 1913, at the same synagogue, with the same rabbi officiating.

How does Marcus Aronoff relate to the family? Or was he a head of the congregation or some other official in the synagogue?

UPDATE: Cousin L noticed a very important detail: My Grandma Minnie lived at 745 E. 6th Street when she married, the same building where his mom (cousin Margaret) lived when she was married by the same rabbi in the same synagogue, just 18 months later. Here's a street view of that building, a 6-story apartment building built in 1900 that still stands today. Yet another indication that the families were close!

Holocaust Remembrance Day 2014

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, I am honoring the memory of loved ones who perished from these branches of my family tree:

• My grandpa Tivador Schwartz's family.
• My great-grandfather Moritz Farkas's family.
• My great-grandma Lena Kunstler's family.
• My Farkas cousins, the Roth family.

I've searched for family members using these resources:

• Yad Vashem
• Shoah Foundation testimonies
• US Holocaust Museum databases
• Jewish Gen's Holocaust databases

Never forget. Never again.

Do Ancestor Landing Pages Work?

Ancestor landing pages have been part of my blog since January, 2013. I set them up after reading about them on Caroline Pointer's Blogging Genealogy. But are they an effective way of communicating with other family researchers--and attracting possible cousins?

Yes! Here's why:

• Readership for the past 14 months has been solid, as the snapshot at left shows. Traffic was especially good on my Schwartz and Birk landing pages. The Mayflower page is only a few months old, which is why its stats are low.
• Contacts from several readers who found my landing pages have led to exchanges of family info and a number of intriguing leads that I'm still following up. Happily, a Wood cousin found my Demarest page just a few months ago!
• Landing pages summarize what I know about a family in one convenient place. When researchers find me through one of my Ancestry family trees, or I discover a new cousin, I mention the landing page for that family as an introduction or a supplement to the tree. A Bentley 4th cousin (Hi Barbara!) enjoyed following the links to learn more about William Tyler Bentley's family and their Gold Rush-era migration to California.

To keep these pages relevant, I periodically update them with bullet points for the latest posts about a particular surname. Also, I add new photos or documents to freshen up the content from time to time. Who knows when a cousin will land on one of these pages, recognize a photo or a signature, and get in touch?

Travel Tuesday: Who Grandpa Left Behind in Ungvar

Schwartz siblings, 1915

When my maternal grandpa, Tivadar Schwartz, traveled from Ungvar, Hungary to New York City in 1902, he left behind his parents, Herman Schwartz and Hani Simonowitz, and all his siblings.

Grandpa never returned to his hometown--in fact, he never left America after he arrived on the S.S. Maltke from Hamburg on March 20, 1902. He never again saw the siblings in the photo at left.

Except for a brief Florida "honeymoon" decades after he and grandma (Hermina Farkas) were married, Tivadar stayed in New York City. 

Two of Tivadar's siblings left Ungvar: His brother Sam (original name: Simon) came to New York City in 1904, and they brought their younger sister Mary in 1906.

The above photo shows Tivadar's sisters and, we think, the husband of one sister. By the time Grandpa received this photo in the summer of 1915, he had been married for 4 years and was the father of a son.

At right, the inscription on the back of the 1915 photo. "Tivadarnak" was an endearment. Grandpa was gone, but not forgotten :)

Between WWI and WWII, Ungvar became part of Czechoslovakia. Even after Ungvar was renamed Uzhgorod when it became part of the USSR's Ukraine after WWII, Grandpa had one answer when asked about his home country: "Czechoslovokia."

2022 update: My grandpa left behind a number of siblings. So far as we can determine from Yad Vashem and other sources, all of his siblings and their spouses were killed in the Holocaust. A few of his nieces/nephews survived, but very few, sorry to day.

Mystery Monday: He's My Great-Grandpa!

Thanks to my newfound Israeli cuz, I learned that this handsome bearded gentleman is my great-grandfather, Herman Schwartz from Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhorod, Ukraine).

Until now, he was one of the many mystery people in my box of "unknowns."













Israeli cuz also solved another mystery: She identified the lovely young lady with a bouquet (at right) as belonging to the family of my great-grandma, Herman's wife, Hani Simonowitz. Blanka sent this to my grandpa, Tivadar Schwartz, in 1924, 22 years after he left Ungvar for America.

Tuesday's Tip: It Takes a Village to Trace a Tree

All of the family trees I'm working on have been "leafed out" with help from other people. Especially this year, I've learned that it truly takes a village to trace a tree. 

For example, Major James Elmer Larimer (hubby's first cousin, 4x removed), wrote to his mother, Asenath Cornwell Larimer, when he was fighting for the Union during the Civil War. At left, a page from one of his many letters--thanks to the gentleman who found me via this blog and who is now part of my village.

Here's how I make it easy for my village to exchange information:

1. My family trees on Ancestry are public (not living people, of course). That's how Philly Cuz found me and how the latest contact from a Wood cousin took place. 

2. I post about people and places on surname and locality message boards. If anybody out there is looking for Schwartz from Ungvar or Farkas from Botpalad or Bentley from Indiana (or California), they'll find my queries on message boards like Ancestry and GenForum. That's how I connected with Bentley researchers, for example.

3. I contact local genealogy clubs and historical societies. Just as one example, the fabulous folks at Elkhart County Genealogical Society provided numerous gravestone photos and probate court records for my research into the Larimer family.

4. I correspond with people who have posted on Find-a-Grave. Sometimes they have more photos they haven't had a chance to post--and among those photos are my ancestors. A very kind volunteer supplied exact directions to hubby's great-great-grand uncle's gravestone so we could visit this summer. Of course, I return the favor by posting photos of dozens of gravestones on F-a-G whenever I visit a cemetery.

5. I blog about my genealogy challenges and achievements. Thanks to this genealogy blog, I've been found by so many cousins! (You know who you are...) The blog also helps me explain to my newfound family what I know (or think I know) about a particular person or branch of the tree. In more than one case, my wonderful blog readers have been instrumental in identifying a person's uniform or place or period.

Thank you to my village!

Thankful Thursday: Thanks to our ancestors who made Thanksgiving 2013 possible

On Thanksgiving, I'm giving thanks to the courageous journey-takers who came to America and made it possible for me and my family to be here today.

My side:

• Farkas ancestors: Above, a Thanksgiving dinner with the Farkas Family Tree, descendants of Moritz Farkas and Lena Kunstler, who arrived in New York City in 1899 and 1900, respectively, bringing their children from Hungary just a little later. I'm one of the "hula girls" near the back at far left.
• Schwartz ancestors: Tivadar (Teddy) Schwartz left Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhorod, Ukraine) in 1902. He encouraged two siblings to join him in New York City, Sam (who arrived in 1904) and Mary (who arrived in 1906). Teddy married Hermina Farkas (daughter of Moritz and Lena) and settled in the Bronx.
• Burk and Mahler ancestors: Isaac Burk, a skilled cabinet maker, arrived in New York City from Lithuania in 1904. His bride-to-be, Henrietta Mahler, was a small child when she came to New York City from Latvia in 1885 or 1886, with her parents Meyer Mahler and Tillie Rose Jacobs. 

Hubby's side:

• Mayflower ancestors: My hubby has four Mayflower ancestors, but only two survived to give thanks on the first Thanksgiving in 1621: Isaac Allerton and his young daughter, Mary Allerton. The Allerton line connected with the Cushman line and eventually married into the Wood family.
• Wood ancestors: John "The Mariner" Wood, Sr., was the journey-taker in the Wood family. Born in England about 1590, he died in Portsmouth, RI in 1655, leaving a tradition of carpentry and sea-faring occupations throughout the Wood family for many generations. 
• McClure ancestors: Halbert McClure and his family journeyed from Raphoe Parish, County Donegal, to Philadelphia and then walked to Virginia to settle down. I'll be researching these ancestors more thoroughly at next year's NGS Conference, which takes place in Richmond on May 7-10.
• Larimer ancestors: Robert Larimer took the perilous voyage from the North of Ireland to Philadelphia--but was shipwrecked along the way. I've told his story before.
• Slatter ancestors: John Slatter Sr. was probably the first journey-taker in this English family, arriving in Ohio around 1889. I haven't yet located the ship records for his daughter Mary Slatter, who married James Edgar Wood in 1898.
• Steiner and Rinehart ancestors: Still on my to-do list is the task of identifying the first ancestors of Jacob S. Steiner to arrive in America. Jake himself was born in Pennsylvania about 1802. Joseph W. Rinehart wasn't the first journey-taker, either. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1806, but I can't find much on his parents (yet).

Thank you, journey-takers. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Motivation Monday: Those Brickwalls Are Crumbling

When I began this blog in 2008, I put the following sentence at the top: Adventures in genealogy . . . finding out who my ancestors were and connecting with cousins today!  What adventures I've had, and what joy in finding cousins all over the map. 

Botpalad, hometown of Moritz Farkas

Nothing is as motivating as a breakthrough, right? November is possibly my best-ever month for bringing down brickwalls, which only makes me want to dig deeper. It's been so exciting that it's hard to know where to begin...remember, all of this happened in the past 25 days, and the month isn't over yet :)

• "Hello Cousin" was the subject line on a much-anticipated e-mail from Israel. After many months of searching, I've finally connected with long-lost Schwartz cousins on my maternal grandfather's side! My 2d cousin confirmed our relationship and sent me wonderful photos of herself and the rest of our family in Israel. Next up: A Skype session! All in the same month that Sis and I met "Philly Cuz" for the first time in person--she's also a 2d cousin on the Schwartz side. And in the same month, I saw my 1st cuz from Queens (Hi, Ira!)
• "James Elmer Larimer" was the subject line on an e-mail that arrived out of the blue. As I wrote just recently, this gentleman is trying to find the connection between hubby's Larimer line and his family (still working on that). He was kind enough to share the wagon-train journal kept by James Elmer Larimer's widow, Asenath Larimer, who went with her brother John Cornwell and three of his neighbors to join the Gold Rush in 1852. The journal is an incredible first-person account of what it was like to walk day after day through an unknown landscape, battle illness and accidents, and--hardest of all, in some ways--to leave loved ones behind, never knowing if the family would see one another again. Spoiler alert: Asenath is reunited with her young children after all!
• "I'm the grandson of ... " read the Ancestry message I received from a first cousin, 1x removed of my hubby's! He's just beginning to trace his family tree and I'm delighted to share what I know about Thomas Haskell Wood and Mary Amanda Demarest, our common ancestors. Can't wait to hear from him again.
• Remember microfilm? Last week I located the handwritten birth entry of my great-grandpa Moritz Farkas in the records of Botpalad, Hungary, contained on a Family History Library microfilm titled "Anyakönyvek Izraelita Hitközseg, Fehérgyarmat." Now I can search the same records for any siblings, knowing I'm in the correct part of the world at the correct time. I'm very motivated to keep cranking through this microfilm, even though part is in Hungarian and part is in German :( 
• Cousin JW, who was thought to be a family friend but turns out to be a cousin of the Farkas family, sent naturalization records and other documents from her parents and grandparents so I can connect her line to our line. I'm almost there. This is an immense breakthrough because we believe it will show we're actually related to a large group of Farkas descendants in Europe and the U.S.
• "Captain Slatter" was the subject line from a lady whose father trained under Captain Jack Slatter in 1941. Captain Jack (actually John Daniel Slatter) was hubby's great-uncle and a renowned bandmaster for 50 years. Replying to this inquiry, I sent a photo of Capt. Jack and a request to hear her father's memories of the good Captain. It's a small world after all!

So many ancestors, so many cousins, so little time. I'm motivated! 

Amanuensis Monday: My Family in WWII, for Veteran's Day

Moritz Farkas and his wife, Lena Kunstler Farkas, had 18 grandchildren. When WWII started, some of Moritz and Lena's grandchildren were of age to serve in the military. My Uncle Fred and Auntie Dorothy (at left) served, along with their first cousins Harry, George, and Robert and cousin-in-law Abe.

For Veteran's Day, I looked back at what the records of the Farkas Family Tree had to say about our relatives in WWII. This family association, formed in 1933 and active for 31 years, was a key element in keeping up the morale of our service members and supporting the parents, siblings, and children who missed them and worried about them. Often the relatives in the service would write one long letter to "the tree" and have it read at the monthly meetings. And tree members would write to relatives in the service to pass along family news and keep up their spirits.

Luckily for me, the tree secretary took minutes at every meeting and prepared a yearend summary of who did what every year in a historian's report, mixing real news with a hefty dose of humor to dispel the worry.

Excerpts from Farkas Family Tree historian's reports from the WWII years:

• From December, 1942: "George, who volunteered for the Army Air Corps early in the year, began his training in April. He is now studying at the Bombardier-Navigator School in Louisiana and, according to his letters is making an intensive survey of the southern accent. For excellence in the art of peeling potatoes, he was promoted to the rank of corporal...Abe is now enjoying a vacation at an exclusive hotel in Florida, managed by US Army. Not to be outdone by the boys, Dorothy decided to become a WAAC. She writes that life in the Army is simply thrilling and that she is having many interesting (?) new experiences."
• From December, 1943: "Uncle Sam decided he needed Fred more than we do, sent him 'Greetings,' and carried him off...This was not the only change which Uncle Sam caused to be made. Earlier in the year, Harry had been inducted...The war has brought a myriad of changes in our lives. Due to gas and tire shortages, we no longer go on our annual picnics and outings...Those are the events of the past year. For the coming year, the earnest hope of all is that 1944 will find the Axis vanquished and our boys home."
• From December, 1944: "Fred was in basic training at Camp Shelby, Dorothy studied at Oxford, Harry trained at Lawson General Hospital to become an X-Ray technician...George served in Africa and Italy...Dorothy received the Europe-Middle East-Africa Theatre ribbon with combat star...Abe arrived in New Guinea...Robert went overseas with the 78th Division to England, France, and Germany...Fred became an MP and later went to the Separation Classification School at Ft. Dix." 
• From December, 1945: "Dorothy was discharged on August 31st, having moved with the 9th Air Force from France to Belgium, returning home with the Bronze Star and 6 battle stars...Harry was stationed at Camp Upton, also Tacoma, Ft. Jackson, S.C., and France...Abe crossed the waters to New Guinea, described by him in vivid colors. When he was moved to Manila, he became a s/sgt... Fred was in Camp Shelby, Camp Blanding, and was promoted to s/sgt... Bob was in England and France, where he had a tough life liberating champagne and women. His last stop was Germany, returning with 3 battle stars."

Friday's Faces from the Past Go Home with a Granddaughter

Edward and Mary (left) with friend at Coney Island

My grandfather Teddy Schwartz and his older brother Samuel Schwartz scraped up money to bring their younger sister Mary Schwartz to New York City from their hometown of Ungvar, Hungary in November, 1906.

In 1913, Mary married Edward Wirtschafter, who founded a furrier business in the Big Apple.

More than 80 years after the photo below was taken, my cousin Harriet still remembered sitting beside her brother Burton in the studio and wearing a lovely pink chiffon dress made by her mother. They're Ed and Mary's children.







Now all these wonderful faces from the past are going home with Mary and Ed's granddaughter.

Travel Tuesday: City Grandpa Visits the Country

After Grandpa Theodore (Tivador) Schwartz (1887-1965) left his home in Ungvar, Hungary (now Uzhorod, Ukraine), he settled in New York City.

Except for a handful of vacations to the bungalow belt of New York State and one honeymoon trip to Florida decades after his 1911 wedding to Hermina Farkas (1886-1964), Teddy stuck to city life.

He never had a car and never learned to drive--why would he, with trolleys, buses, and subways steps away from his business and apartment in the Bronx?

Here are two photos from the late 1920s and 1930s, contrasting Teddy's usual daily life (below, in his Bronx grocery store, Teddy's Dairy) with two of his rare visits to the country (above).

In the country we see Grandpa Teddy with John, his assistant at the grocery. Where were they? At that time, the Bronx still had some very rural areas, so it could have been within a trolley or subway ride--or possibly in Westchester? John obviously had a car, so they may have taken a day trip even further.

The photos are undated, but judging by the amount of hair that Teddy has and his face, the one at top left looks like it was taken around the same time as the photo at bottom, where Teddy is standing with John in front of the grocery store in 1934. The photo with Teddy and John and John's car is clearly earlier, judging by the age of the car.

Friday's Faces from the Past: Grandma as a Young Lady

Grandma Hermina Farkas Schwartz (1886-1964) arrived in New York City from Hungary two days after her 15th birthday. She was accompanied by her older brother Alex and two younger sisters, Ella and Freda.

The photo at left was taken about 1910, by Gustav Beldegreen, the photographer who served as official photographer for the Kossuth Ferenc Hungarian Literary Sick and Benevolent Society--a group that my Farkas relatives helped to found in NYC.

This photo is now featured in a book about Hungarian photographers who came to America, including Beldegreen.

At right, another Beldegreen photo of my grandma, possibly the same day but certainly around the same time as the photo above.

Given that Grandma was an expert seamstress and made her living sewing silk ties, she might even have stitched the stylish dress she's wearing.

She makes quite the fashion statement with her scarf, hat, umbrella, gloves, and shoes!

These photos were probably taken the year before grandma married Theodore (Tivador) Schwartz (1887-1965), who was from Ungvar, Hungary and who encouraged both his brother Simon (renamed Samuel) and his sister Mary (Marushka) to come to America.

Wordless Wednesday: Double Trouble, Dressed Alike (for a Change)

Everybody, label your photos with names and dates! This is a "wordless Wednesday" because there were no words on these photos.

My Mom, Daisy Schwartz Burk, rarely dressed her twin girls alike because she, as a twin, didn't like this "tradition."

But here are two special occasion photos where Sis and I are dressed alike.

Above left, we're "gypsy girls" playing the piano at a Farkas Family Tree Thanksgiving dinner (is my memory correct, Sis?).

Above right, we're dressed up for, I believe, a family event on the Burk/Mahler side of the family. Without the initials on the top margin, I would never have guessed who was who. How 'bout you, Sis? Sadly, no dates, either. Lesson learned: Label, label, label.

Blogoversary #5 and Going Strong!

Thank you, dear relatives and readers, for following along on the genealogical journey I've been documenting here for the past five years. And thank you to the many dozens of Geneabloggers whose posts and comments have encouraged and inspired me to try new things, like the ancestor landing pages just below my masthead and using Facebook for genealogy.

Some of the high points since Blogoversary #4: 

• Being "found" by Philly Cuz, a second cousin from my Schwartz side. She's been kind enough to share photos and stories. Quite a trip down memory lane on both sides, and of course, an in-person visit is in our future. Thank you!
• Finally seeing the all-important McClure book to confirm the Scots-Irish connection. And while at Allen County Public Library, locating more records of the McClure fam in Adams County books on the open shelves. Thank you to ACPL staff and volunteers! 
• Teaming up with a long-time Bentley researcher to try to fill in the blanks on William Tyler Bentley's life and family. We have a ways to go but have been making progress together. And it's wonderful to have connected with an actual Bentley cousin (hi Elizabeth) who's tracing her tree also. Thank you all!
• Being "found" by the son of a woman who sailed across the Atlantic with my Auntie Dorothy Schwartz, the WAC, on the oceanliner that defied the German subs. I never would have known about the magazine article describing that tense ocean crossing if not for him. Thank you!
• Scanning and indexing 31 years of notes and historians' reports from meetings of the Farkas Family Tree, my maternal grandma's family. One fabulous cousin retyped many barely readable documents for this project, and a number of cousins very patiently answered questions about who's who, so we can get this book into shape for the next generation to browse and keep (I hope!). Thank you!

Now for some of the big questions I'm still trying to answer:

• Are any descendants of Paula Schwartz and her daughter, Viola, still alive? Answered...Yes! I'm now in touch with these cousins! (updated 2022)
• Where oh where in Ireland do hubby's ancestors hail from? Yes, I'm talking about you, Smith, Shehen, and Larimer ancestors. Stop hiding in plain sight!
• Where did the Steiners and Rineharts come from in the Old World? Thanks to the kindness of FindaGrave volunteers who've photographed graves and clarified family connections on our behalf, we expect to make progress. 
• Where in Lithuania did Isaac Burk/Birk come from and who else was in his family (parents and siblings)? Updated 2022: Their birthplace was Gargzdai.

Friday's Faces from the Past: Za Za and Louis Waldman in the Bronx

Someone in my mother's family was friends** with the Waldmans, because I still have this photo of the adorable Waldman children.

The inscription on the inside front cover shows the original Hungarian notes (dated 1918) and my mother's transcription of the names: Za Za and Louis Waldman. 

Who were the Waldmans and whose friends were they? I know they lived in the Bronx (I checked the Census, not just the photographer's address). Were they friends of the Farkas family (my grandma Hermina Farkas) or the Schwartz family (my grandpa Theodore Schwartz)?

More FAN (friends and neighbors) research needed!

**2022 update: The mother of these adorable kids was Julia Farkas, a cousin of my mother's Farkas family.

Ancestor Landing Pages: Views But No Connections Yet

As you can see from this chart, my ancestor landing pages are being viewed. The bottom two pages were posted just a few weeks ago, so the low page views are no surprise.

I started using ancestor landing pages back in January, after reading a post by Caroline Pointer. 

The Birk and Mahler pages were among the earliest posted, so it makes sense that they're the most viewed. Even though the pages have not yet brought me new genealogical connections...I still have hope they'll lead to breakthroughs!

2022 update: I added an ancestor landing page for McClure, Donegal--and it's now the most viewed by far.