Have a Happy Thanksgiving

This colorful penny postal greeting was sent from a Wood cousin in Toledo, Ohio, to his cousin in Cleveland, Ohio in November of 1910. The message was a reminder that the cousins were gathering for a big meal on the day after Thanksgiving, so save room for more holiday feasting. 

May you and your family enjoy a happy and healthy Thanksgiving! 

Thanksgiving Greetings from 1914

According to the postmark, Rachel Ellen "Nellie" Wood Kirby (1862-1954) sent this colorful Thanksgiving postcard from her home in Chicago to her young Wood nephew in Cleveland on Wednesday, November 25, 1914. 

He was nine that year, and he also received penny postal greetings for Thanksgiving from his first cousins in Toledo, Ohio.

Dear readers, I wish you and your families a most happy and very healthy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Week Weddings in the Big Apple

More than a few ancestors in my family tree celebrated a Thanksgiving week wedding during the first half of the twentieth century. 

All married in New York City, and nearly all of the couples (or their immediate family members) appear in photos from my parents' Thanksgiving weekend wedding.

In 1916, maternal cousin Jennie Mandel married Isidore Hartfield. They had two children, although one was born so prematurely that she sadly lived only two days. This couple was at my parents' wedding!

In 1917, paternal cousin Louis Jacob married Katie Rosenberg on the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend. They were wed in Brooklyn, New York and never left the borough, where they raised their daughter. 

In 1935, maternal cousin Ernest Roth married Fay Barth on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. They had two children together. Ernest's older sister Margaret was at my parents' wedding!

In 1940, my maternal uncle Fred Shaw married Daisy Ida Katz on Thanksgiving Day. They had two children (my first cousins). Of course this aunt and uncle attended my parents' wedding! 

In 1945, my paternal 1c1r Norma Berg married Allen Mador on Thanksgiving weekend. This couple was at my parents' wedding! 

In 1946, Mom (Daisy Schwartz) and Dad (Harold Burk) were married on Thanksgiving weekend at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City. The photo at top, taken just before the ceremony, shows L to R: mother of the bride Hermina Farkas Schwartz; maid of honor Dorothy Schwartz; and the bride, in her glittery gold lame wedding dress.

Thinking of these ancestral couples with affection and remembering their happy wedding days during this Thanksgiving week! 

Going Beyond Names and Dates with NaGenWriMo

I'm writing and posting ancestor bios from my family tree and my husband's tree to various genealogy sites as I participate in #NaGenWriMo, National Genealogy Writing Month. 

Without my ancestors, I wouldn't be here. I'm thankful in this month of Thanksgiving to be able to honor their memory with bios, so they won't be forgotten in the future.

Already this month, I've posted or revised bios for more than 30 ancestors. Most recently, I enriched the bite-sized bio of my great aunt Dora Lillie Mahler (1894-1950) on WikiTree, posted the bio on MyHeritage, and called the New York cemetery where she's buried to ask for specifics on her plot location--so I could add the details to Dora's Find a Grave memorial page and her Ancestry profile. 

More Mahler and Jacobs bios (relatives and in-laws) are in my plans for the coming week. These ancestors are from my father's side of the family tree. Today I wrote a bio about Flora Jacobs (1890-1923), the third daughter of Joseph Jacobs and Eva Michalovsky to pass away young, unfortunately.

Even bios that are only narratives flowing together data from Census and vital records, with residence and occupation and birth place/death place, birth order, and other details, help bring ancestors alive. If I can add photos (such as this touching gravestone), even better.

More bios to come.

Penny Postcard Thanksgiving Greetings

 

More than a century ago, this colorful penny postal greeting was sent to my husband's uncle in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Wishing you and your loved ones a very happy and very healthy Thanksgiving! 

Happy Thanksgiving - Hubby's 5 Mayflower Ancestors

Penny postal card sent to Wallis W. Wood, circa 1910

Happy Thanksgiving!

As I do every year, I'm honoring the memory of my husband's five Mayflower ancestors. Thank you to cousin Larry, the family genealogist, for uncovering these connections to the Puritans.

• Francis Cooke 
• Degory Priest
• Isaac Allerton
• Mary Norris Allerton
• Mary Allerton

Young Mary Allerton later married Thomas Cushman of the Fortune. She was the last of the original Mayflower passengers to die, on November 28, 1699, exactly 320 years ago.

The Fortune and the Mayflower

EVERYONE knows the name of the first ship from Europe to reach Massachusetts in 1620. But not everyone knows the name of the second ship, the Fortune, which arrived in November of 1621.

The Fortune is vitally important to my husband's family tree: young Thomas Cushman, a passenger on that second ship, later married my husband's Mayflower ancestor, Mary Allerton.

With Mayflower 2020 in mind, I've been doing a bit more research via the NEHGS and via the Hathitrust Digital Library, where there are more than 115,000 results for the phrase "Mayflower descendants" (as shown at top).

The four Pilgrim ancestors in my husband's family tree are:

• Degory Priest, who planned to send for wife Sarah Allerton Priest later, unfortunately didn't survive the first winter. 
• Isaac Allerton, whose first wife (out of three) was
• Mary Norris Allerton...unfortunately, she didn't survive the first winter.
• Mary Allerton, a daughter of Isaac and Mary, who lived into her 80s. Until she died on Nov. 28, 1699, she was known as the final surviving Mayflower passenger.

Wishing you all a happy and healthy Thanksgiving as my #52Ancestors "Thankful" prompt this week.

Thankful for My Family's Past and My Family's Future

Family is a precious gift, the gift that keeps giving. Above, the Farkas Family Tree Thanksgiving dinner and costume party held at the Gramercy Park Hotel in 1956. Descendants of patriarch Moritz Farkas and matriarch Leni Kunstler Farkas formed the tree association in 1933. I'm one of the two young hula twins in the top left corner. This large, fun-loving family celebrated together on many occasions, beginning in the Depression years.

On Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the Farkas cousin who first inspired me to begin my genealogy journey 20 years ago . . . and the many Farkas, Mahler, Burk, Schwartz, and Wood cousins I've met or reconnected with during my family history journey.

As the descendant of immigrants, I'm especially thankful for the courage and determination of ancestors who left everyone and everything they knew to begin again in a new country. Thank you for the forever gift of my family's past and my family's future!

And thank you to Elizabeth O'Neal for the November "thankful" theme of the Genealogy Blog Party.

For Thanksgiving at Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland

For Thanksgiving in Ohio, 1912: Dorothy Louise Baker (1897-1981) sent this pretty penny postcard to her first cousin in Cleveland, Wallis Walter Wood (1905-1957). Dorothy lived in Toledo with her parents--her mother was the older sister of Wallis's mother.

Dorothy's handwriting was very clear, so it was easy to read the address: 12513 Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland.

I have a photo of Wallis and his older brother, Edgar James Wood* (1903-1986), in front of this very house. Well, actually, I have a few photos of the Wood family homes all over Cleveland. Because the head of the household built homes for a living, he would move his family into a partially-finished home while he began construction on another home nearby. They moved every two years or so.

Following the dates and addresses on penny postcards sent to the Wood family, and checking the US Census, I can follow approximately when they moved from one home to another. In the 1910 Census, they were not living on Lancelot Avenue, and postcards of that year add confirmation. In 1915, postcards were not sent to them on Lancelot Avenue but to Locke Ave. The family was living at Lancelot Avenue from 1911-1913, based on the postcards.

I took a close look at the boys, who were 7 and 9 in 1912. In this photo, they seem a bit younger than that. So I've dated it as 1911.

*Edgar James Wood was my husband's father.

Thanksgivings of the Past

Happy Thanksgiving! I looked back in diaries, postcards, meeting minutes, and other bits and pieces of my genealogical collection to get a glimpse of what happened on Thanksgivings of the past in my family and my husband's family.*

• The strangely-colored postcard at right, from the 1910s, was received in East Cleveland by hubby's uncle, Wallis W. Wood. The sender was "Aunt Nellie" (Rachel Ellen Wood Kirby), who lived in Chicago and never missed an opportunity to send holiday or birthday greetings to her nephews and nieces in the Wood family.
• On Thanksgiving Day of 1959, my late father-in-law (Edgar J. Wood) received the exciting news that he would be a grandfather for the first time during 1960. How do I know? He wrote about it in his diary!
• On Thanksgiving Day of 1950, my grandma's Farkas family gathered at the C&L Restaurant in Manhattan for dinner and accordion entertainment, at $6 per person. My parents, Daisy Schwartz and Harry Burk, told the family they were buying a TV set to celebrate their wedding anniversary (they married on November 24, 1946). I read about it in the minutes of the Farkas Family Tree.
• The Farkas Family Tree and spouses and children pitched in to have a photo taken of everyone who attended the Thanksgiving Day dinner at a Manhattan hotel in 1956. It was a large group! Again, the story of planning this dinner and the photography is straight out of the tree's monthly minutes, which I scanned and indexed a few years ago.
• My aunt Dorothy Schwartz worked on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade with her long-time friend and partner, Lee Wallace, from 1950-1952. Lee was then the head of public relations for Macy's, and Dorothy was her assistant. Then my aunt got her teaching license and left the world of retail to teach typing and shorthand at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. Yes, this is the same aunt who was a WAC during WWII.

 *Not including hubby's Mayflower ancestors celebrating Thanksgiving, of course. That's the oldest "Thanksgiving of the Past" story I can tell to my family for the holiday.

Saluting Pilgrim Ancestors

As Thanksgiving approaches, I want to salute my husband's four Pilgrim ancestors who arrived on the Mayflower: Isaac Allerton, his wife Mary Norris Allerton, their daughter Mary Allerton, and Degory Priest.

Sadly, neither Degory Priest nor Mary Norris Allerton survived the first year at Plymouth.

There's a new Mayflower Heritage page on AmericanAncestors.org with lots of great details about the Pilgrims, including a page where descendants can be listed. I'm going to check that out!

Reading the Mayflower Society's listing of notable descendants, I see that hubby's connection to Isaac Allerton means he's distantly related to: Louis Comfort Tiffany, Joanne Woodward, Franklin D. Roosevelt (also descended from Degory Priest), and Zachary Taylor. Thanks to the Degory Priest connection, hubby is also distantly related to Richard Gere.

In just a few years, we'll be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower's arrival.

Feeling thankful this Thanksgiving!

Family Greetings for Thanksgiving, 1910

Here's another postcard among the several dozen sent to my husband's uncle, Wallis W. Wood (1905-1957), by his aunts, uncles, and first cousins. The year this colorful card was sent was 1910, when Wallis was only five years old. It gives me insight into understanding the Wood family and their connections a century ago.

The cousin sending the card was, I believe, Dorothy Louise Baker (1897-1981), daughter of Adelaide "Ada" Mary Ann Slatter Baker (1868-1947) and James Sills Baker (1866-1937). "Ada" was the sister of little Wallis's mother, Mary Slatter Wood (1869-1925). So this is one first cousin writing to another first cousin.

The card says: "Do not eat too much dinner tomorrow, Dorothy & Brother Garrett are going to have dinner with us tomorrow. From cousin Dorothy." 

Was 13-year-old Dorothy Baker talking about cousins on her mother's side or her father's side? Either way, she knew this card would be read not by the recipient, who was barely in kindergarten, but by an adult. I'm sure the adult(s) knew exactly who Dorothy meant. Dorothy was a common name in the family, but not Garrett. I'm still investigating various possibilities.

I especially noticed the address, 12513 Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland. I took a virtual field trip to this address a few years ago and the house there still stands, looking much as it did when first built by James Edgar Wood (1871-1939), the father of the little boy who received this card 107 years ago.

Postcards like this show how valuable ephemera can be in understanding family dynamics from generations past. In the Wood and Slatter families, holiday greetings were sent for every possible occasion, from Easter and Christmas to New Year's and Halloween. Birthday cards were exchanged, too. The adults clearly wanted to be sure that youngsters in the next generation knew each other and stayed in touch!

Thankful Thursday: Passing My Parents' 70-Year-Old Wedding Album to Heirs

Saving my parents' wedding album by making a photo book for their 3 grandchildren

On November 24, 1946, the Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend, my parents, Harry Burk (1909-1978) and Daisy Schwartz (1919-1981) were married at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City. Today would have been their 70th wedding anniversary!

After so many decades, their wedding album was pretty beat up-looking (see below). So I decided to preserve it and share it with Harry & Daisy's three grandchildren now, along with the story of their courtship and marriage. This is also an easy way to be sure that a single heirloom album can be enjoyed by multiple heirs for many years to come.

Here are the steps I took, little by little, to make a pretty and romantic photobook from the wedding album:

1. Remove each 8 x 10 inch photo from its sleeve in the binder and scan it at high resolution. (I could have scanned without removing the photos, if the album was too deteriorated, but not necessary in this case.)

2. Clean up the images electronically and upload them to a photo book website (I like Shutterfly but others are also excellent).

3. Arrange the photos in sequence, adding the story of courtship and wedding as captions. Also, identify everyone in the photos by full name and relationship (so these details aren't forgotten by future generations--keeping family history alive!).

4. Add a touch of color to each page for visual interest (younger folks may find an all black-and-white book a bit boring).

5. Press the "order" button to buy multiple copies for multiple heirs.

6. The original wedding album will be passed to an heir in the next generation, as designated in my "genealogical will."

On Thanksgiving, I'm feeling thankful for my parents' wedding 70 years ago.

Surname Saturday: The Mayflower Connection for Thomas Haskell Wood

'Tis the season for Mayflower connections. Hubby has four Mayflower ancestors.

• (1) Degory Priest (he married Sarah Allerton, and their daughter Sarah Priest married John Coombs; their son married Elizabeth Royal; Sarah/John Coombs' daughter Elizabeth Royal Coombs married Eleazer Cushman. The son of that marriage was James Cushman who married Sarah Hatch; their granddaughter Lydia was the mother of Harriet Taber, who married Isaiah Wood Sr. in Massachusetts in 1806. Harriet and Isaiah were hubby's 2d-great-grandparents).

• (2) Isaac Allerton, (3) Mary Norris, and (4) Mary Allerton (Mary Allerton married Thomas Cushman of the Fortune; their son Eleazer Cushman married Elizabeth Royal Coombs, g-grandaughter of Degory Priest. Isaac & Mary Allerton were hubby's 8th great-grandparents).

Reading other GeneaBloggers' posts about Mayflower ancestors, I noticed that Bill West mentioned his Allerton ancestry--and included, among the Allerton descendants in his line, an in-law with the surname of Haskell.

Death notice for Thomas Haskell Wood, Toledo, OH

Haskell rings an important bell. Hubby's great-granddaddy was Thomas Haskell Wood (1809-1890). For years, I've puzzled over the Haskell name. Thomas Haskell Wood did bestow the Haskell name on one of his sons: Thomas Jefferson Isaiah Haskell Wood* (1848-1861). That's the last time I've seen Haskell in 19th or 20th century Wood descendants, and why it appeared or disappeared, I couldn't figure out.

I can't say exactly how Haskell is related to my husband's Wood line because I still haven't finished adding all the Mayflower descendants from the Allertons and Cushmans. But I now believe Thomas Haskell Wood's middle name is a tribute to the Haskell who married into the family's Mayflower line many generations back. Thankful for these Mayflower ancestors as Thanksgiving approaches.


* Why Thomas Jefferson Isaiah Haskell Wood? His parents (Thomas H. Wood and Mary Amanda Demarest) were married in Louisiana in 1845--territory secured by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803, which became a state in 1812. And of course President Jefferson died in 1826, which may have been another reason for honoring this famous man through the name. The "Isaiah" middle name comes from this Thomas J. I. H. Wood's grandfather.

Thankful Thursday: Farkas Family Thanksgivings of the Past

I'm one of the hula girls at left, near the back of the room

In 1933, the adult children of Moritz Farkas and Lena Kunstler Farkas formed the Farkas Family Tree association to continue the family closeness as the next generation grew up. They held 10 meetings a year, plus holiday gatherings in between, all in and around New York City. This was the family tree of my mother's mother--although all in-laws, especially my mother's father, were warmly welcomed.

The Tree planned a Thanksgiving dinner most years for the entire membership, beginning in 1934. These were fun affairs, with costumes, prizes, and--of course--lots and lots of holiday foods.

I'm thankful to have the minutes from 30 years of the Farkas Family Tree's meetings. Let me summarize what the minutes say about some memorable Thanksgiving get-togethers.

November, 1934: Thanksgiving dinner at Reichman's, 82nd Street & Second Ave., at 6 p.m. This was the first formal holiday dinner held at a restaurant, with adults paying the full $1.50 per meal and the Tree association paying for the children's meals. My great aunt Ella suggested a tradition that continued for 25 years: Dressing the children in costumes (with adults sometimes joining in). In all, the Tree paid $59 for dinners, music, tips, and decorations.

November, 1935: Thanksgiving dinner was held at the Hotel Hamilton (described, according to the hotel directory listing at Steve Morse's site, as "the House of Sunshine"), again at a cost of $1.50 per meal. Members donated: "cigars and cigarettes, cocktails, caps, noise makers, wine, rye, and assorted prizes." The full cost of feeding and entertaining the Tree members: $63.80.

 November, 1937: Quoting from the minutes about this year's Thanksgiving--"The adults of the group 'dressed up' and the result was a hilarious mad-house. A more strikingly original and handsome combination of costumes could not have been seen even at an Elsa-Maxwell-planned party."

Concourse Plaza Hotel

November, 1944: My great aunt Rose volunteered to host Thanksgiving dinner at her house, provided she would have help with "kp" and doing the dishes. The minutes say: "It was finally agreed that the Democrats would take on the job if the Republicans won the job, and vice-versa."

November, 1948: Thanksgiving dinner was held at the Concourse Plaza Hotel in the Bronx, at a cost of $6.50 per person. Recognizing that this cost was a little steep, the Tree subsidized part of the cost for adults and paid for all children, as was the usual custom for holiday meals.

November, 1956: The Tree held its costume dinner at the Hotel Gramercy Park in Manhattan, a "howling success" (according to the minutes). This was the first time all members posed as a group in costume, as shown at top of today's post.

Thanksgiving 1909, 5 Slatter Siblings, and 24 First Cousins

Hubby's Wood family had four Mayflower ancestors. I'm in awe of the courage of these Pilgrims in undertaking the dangerous and demanding voyage from Plymouth, England to the New World in 1620.

Sadly, only two of these Wood ancestors (Isaac Allerton and his daughter, Mary Allerton) survived to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in 1621.

Happily, more recent ancestors from the Wood line left some trace of their Thanksgiving celebrations in colorful postcard greetings.

This is the front and back of a 1909 holiday greeting sent from Dorothy Louise Baker (1897-1981), a daughter of Adelaide (Ada) Mary Ann Slatter and James Sills Baker, to her 1st cousin, Wallis Walter Wood (1905-1957). Wallis was a son of Ada's sister, Mary Slatter and James Edgar Wood.
 


Dorothy and Wallis were among the 24 first cousins who were related through the 5 Slatter siblings: Ada, Mary, Albert, John Daniel, and Henry Arthur.

Happy and healthy Thanksgiving to all!

Two of Hubby's Four Mayflower Ancestors Celebrated the First Thanksgiving

Hubby is descended from four Mayflower ancestors: Degory Priest, Mary Norris (wife of Isaac Allerton), Isaac Allerton, and Mary Allerton (daughter of Isaac and Mary).

Sadly, Degory Priest and Mary Norris didn't survive to the first Thanksgiving. Happily, Isaac Allerton and his daughter Mary (plus two other children) celebrated the first Thanksgiving in Plymouth.

Mary Allerton Cushman was hubby's 7th great-grandmother and the longest-lived of the Mayflower immigrants. She died on November 28, 1699--315 years ago this week.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving - Parade Memories

Living in NYC, my family often went to the big Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, which meant getting up early and riding the subway an hour to get downtown to a street where we could see the floats and bands pass by. Of course Spider Man wasn't in the parade then, but other cartoon favorites were fun to see. Santa in his sleigh arrived at the tail end of the parade, then as now, much anticipated as the high point of the whole show. The crowds were enormous but we usually staked out a spot where we children could sit on a parent's shoulders or climb on a nearby statue or fountain to get a better view. If we were lucky, we'd come home with a little balloon of our own! My honorary aunt Lee Wallace directed this big parade for a number of years.

In other years, we watched the Macy's parade on TV and flipped channels to see the Dayton's parade in Detroit (after the Macy's parade was over) and the Gimbel's parade in Philadelphia. I didn't realize that the Philadelphia parade had continued after Gimbel's went bust in the 1980s, but now it's the a sponsored parade by another brand. 

Happy Thanksgiving and happy memories. (updated 2022)

Wordless Wednesday - Thanksgiving 1956

My maternal grandmother (Hermina Farkas Schwartz) and her siblings and their families celebrated Thanksgiving (Nov 22, 1956) by gathering at the Hotel Gramercy Park in New York City for a masquerade luncheon. This was only one of many "Farkas Family Tree" get-togethers that I can remember over the years. The photographer spelled "Farkas" incorrectly (bottom right of photo, it's spelled "Falkas"). I'm one of the Hawaiian girls at left toward the back of the room, wearing a lei. Happy Thanksgiving!