Happy Birthday to Mom and Auntie

On December 4, 1919, my grandmother and grandfather were quite surprised by the arrival of twin daughters, my Auntie Dorothy and my Mom, Daisy. 

Here's an old photo of Dorothy Schwartz, 1919-2001 and Daisy Schwartz Burk, 1919-1981. 

They look very cute holding hands, and of course their proud mother dressed them identically.

Very likely this photo was taken a couple of years earlier than 1927.

I had some fun with this photo, first colorizing it using MyHeritage's excellent photo enhancement tools. At left is the result. 

I have no reference for whether the colorizing is accurate, but my guess is their hats matched the coats and were either light brown or grey. 

Lilac hats, as colorized, would have been cute too. And oh those clunky shoes.

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Then I used the iColoring site to turn the black-and-white original photo into a pencil sketch, for free. The result is at bottom of this post. I especially like this version for an ancestor coloring book! In fact, I already sent the page to my niece for her two little ones to color.

Thinking of Mom and Auntie with much love on this 106th anniversary of their birth in the Bronx, New York.

PS: Dorothy was 5 minutes older than Daisy 😉

Searching Reclaim the Records' New York State Death Index

Hooray for Reclaim the Records, which has once again, through legal cases and perseverance, forced the public disclosure of vital records that should be public. This time, the result is the disclosure of millions of historical death records from New York State, covering the years 1880 to 2017.

Our friends at Reclaim the Records created an innovative, easy-to-search website that also functions very well with natural language search queries. Here's the link to this new site.

Above, a screen shot of the home page, showing suggested natural language search queries. I tried this search: "Ruth Markell died in New Rochelle in 1941," referring to a 1c1r who died young. I have her obit but not her death cert. 

In a split second, I got a result. And when I clicked on that Ruth Markell result, I got a bit more detail PLUS an unusually helpful bonus: "People with the surname ____ who died nearby." Above, an excerpt from the bonus, showing this little girl's brothers, who both died in New Rochelle, New York in the 1970s. 

Do give this new database a try if you have New York State ancestors who died between 1880 and 2017. Thank you very much to Reclaim the Records!

Thanksgiving Greetings to 12513 Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland

On November 23, 1910, a first cousin sent this penny postal greeting to Wallis W. Wood, my husband's uncle. 

At the time, the Wood family was living at 12513 Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. 

The house was built by Wallis's father, James Edgar Wood (1871-1939), who built dozens of homes in and around that area. Typically, James would construct a home on spec, finish one floor, move his family in, and slowly complete the inside while framing the outside of yet another home. The family wound up moving every year or two as James sold off each house. 

His homes have stood for more than a century!

At left, a street view from Google Maps of 12513 Lancelot Avenue in Cleveland, dated 2022. Clearly, this house is still going strong.

The Wood family celebrated a couple of holiday seasons there before moving to yet another almost-completed home.

Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.

The End of the #GenChat Era

The social media genealogy chat #GenChat began in 2013. (For more about its history and evolution, see here.) Christine McCloud became #GenChat co-host in 2018 and sole host in 2022. Sadly, this chat will end in mid-December, as shown in her announcement.

 

Christine presided over some major changes during her long tenure. Most important, as the social media world evolved, Christine expanded #GenChat from the Twitter platform to the Mastodon platform. This meant she hosted four chats each month instead of two. 

Then, when many genealogy folks fled Twitter, she moved #GenChat to BlueSky and contributed to the vibrant genealogy community there. 

Christine has maintained the two chats format twice per month, a challenging schedule on top of mastering the technology to operate both chats.😲 Not to mention that she actually has a life of her own!

Meanwhile, BlueSky gained two other genealogy chats, #GenHour (on Thursdays) and #AncestryHour (on Tuesdays). Both of these chats are weekly, lively and unmoderated, with BlueSky folks posting informally about their current genealogy activities and sharing ideas and info with other chatters. 

The final two #GenChats will be November 28/29 (Friday on BlueSky, Saturday on Mastodon) and December 12/13 (Friday on BlueSky, Saturday on Mastodon).

A heartfelt thank you to Christine for keeping #GenChat going with such enthusiasm and dedication! You have done a superb job, and you are much appreciated. 😍 

Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad

 

On Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend in 1946, Daisy Schwartz (1919-1981) and Harold Burk (1909-1978) were wed at the Hotel McAlpin in New York City. Above, a photo from their wedding album, showing them reading congratulatory telegrams (the text messages of the time).

The Hotel McAlpin was a gigantic hotel, built in 1912 and boasting a Turkish bath, an in-house orchestra, plunge pool, and even a women's only floor. 

Mom got dressed in her gold lame wedding gown and matching gold shoes in her room upstairs (I can see from the photos). After the ceremony, she returned to her room to pick up her suitcase and put on her Persian Lamb winter coat for the train trip to honeymoon in Atlantic City, New Jersey. 

Happy anniversary to Mom and Dad, much loved, much missed, never forgotten.

Update: US Veterans Affairs FOIA Appeals Under Review

 

I'm beginning to hear back from the US Veterans Affairs authorities about my appeals of requests for ancestor veterans' files, which I asked for on the basis of the Freedom of Information Act. 

The very first request I sent, way back in early December of 2024, was for my Dad's veteran's file. Many months later, I was sent a skimpy extract with bare-bones info. I followed the terrific advice of the Reclaim the Records experts and appealed. Then as more skimpy extracts or denials arrived, I continued to appeal.

Above, the email I received this week from the US Veterans Affairs office, telling me they are "obtaining relevant records and/or information concerning" this particular appeal, and can't even estimate when my appeal will be completed. I imagine all the responses will look similar to this.

Just looking at the letter above, you can see how long the VA took to respond to my request for this particular veteran. More than 8 months, to be precise. And now I have no idea when I will receive a determination. I expect to have to wait. And wait. And wait. 

PS: Already I have 6 of these letters in 2 days, with more on the way. Identical in wording, only the case number and veteran's name are different on each letter.

Deeply Wrong Results Via AI Deeper Dive

Every year around this time, I redo my research on Leona "Lee" Wallace (1903-1989), who ran the legendary Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade from the late 1940s until the early 1950s. Lee was born on November 24, 1903 in Poland. She was my aunt Dorothy's life partner and is remembered fondly as a devoted aunt. I really enjoy keeping her memory alive through my role as family historian.

Of course I use genealogy and newspaper sources but I also use a regular ole Google search just in case. And...the online search results were interesting, to say the least.

No relation to the actor Lee Wallace

My initial Google search included the above "AI Overview" of results. It says "Lee Wallace is primarily known as an actor, but there was also a Leona "Lee" Zonna Wallace who, along with her company, helped manage the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and its special events." [Correctly, it indicated no info connecting the actor Lee Wallace to this parade, and went on to list some of the actor's film credits.]

OK, the AI results do show "Lee Wallace Associates" which was, in fact, my aunt Lee's company. And there's a distinction in the results between the actor and the person who ran the Thanksgiving Day Parade, also true. Mind you, the info used by Google's AI was directly from my own genealogy blog posts about Lee Wallace Associates. 

Google's AI next asked whether I wanted to take a deeper dive into the AI results. Sure. 

Deeper dive: cue the hallucinations

See the deep-dive results above? The assumption is that Lee Wallace was male. Nope.

Then came fascinating and utterly fanciful hallucinations about Lee Wallace's "portfolio of events." 

Some of the parades and events listed in the so-called results didn't even begin until after my Aunt Lee retired. There is no possible way that Aunt Lee had anything at all to do with the St. Paddy's Parade or the NYC Marathon. Not the Orange Bowl Parade either. Hallucinations!

These deeper dive AI results gave me and my family a big laugh. But no correct or usable info in this case. 

Good news - New news stories!

Anyway, I did find a new (to me) newspaper story about Lee when I searched NewspaperArchive. It was a human interest feature that appeared in late December, 1950 in several Midwest newspapers, about Lee planning the 1951 Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York, also discussing her early working career. A nice new article I hadn't yet uncovered. It's fun to see how far and wide the Macy's parade was known.