Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Wordless Wednesday ~ Sheva Moskowitz


My husband's great grandmother, Sheva Moskowitz, who is mentioned in a recent post about Moskowitz cousins and is listed as Sarah Moskowitz on her son Morris Goldstein's death certificate. As I have mentioned, she was of IaČ™i (Yassy), Romania, and I don't think she ever came to America.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Amanuensis Monday ~ Morris Goldstein's Death Certificate

An Amanuensis is a person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I obtained this death certificate almost twenty years ago when I first started researching my husband's genealogy. I obtained this in Ventnor City Hall on the same day that I visited the Atlantic City Hall and obtained a death certificate for my husband's great grandfather, Max Levitt, as well as a death certificate for a great grandfather of mine who died in Atlantic City in 1931.


Handwritten entries are in blue. My editorial comments and additions are bracketed.

 1. Place of Death:
    a. County: Atlantic
    b. City: Ventnor
    c. Length of Stay (in this place): 4 yrs  [Prior to 1961, he lived in Woodbine.]
    d. If not in hospital or institution give street address or location: 118 N. Avolyn
 2. Usual Residence:
   a. State: NJ
   b. County: Atl. [Atlantic]
   c. City: Ventnor
   d. Street Address: 118 N. Avolyn Ave. [He and wife, Rose, lived with their daughter, son-in-law, and four grandsons.]
 3. Name of Deceased: Morris Goldstein
 4. Date of Death: Oct. 11, 1965
 5. Sex: Male
 6. Color or race: White
 7. Married
 8. Date of Birth: April 20, 1897
 9. Age: 68 years
10a. Usual Occupation: Retired
10b. Kind of Business or Industry: Tailor
11. Birthplace: Roumania
12. Citizen of What Country: - [I still haven't found his naturalization papers.]
13. Father's Name: Isaac Goldstein [He did not immigrate; he remained in Romaina.]
14. Mother's Maiden Name: Sarah Moskowitz [It's great when you get a maiden name!]
15. Was Deceased Ever in U.S. Armed Forces: - [Should be "yes" as he served in WWI.]
16. Social Security No.: -
17. Informant: -
18. Cause of Death: Acute Coronary Occlusion (5 min.) due to Coronary Heart Disease (6 yrs)

22. Indicates that the doctor had cared for him from December 1962, had last seen him alive on September 29, 1965, and that he died at 2:00 pm
23. Doctor's Signature: A. Bataglia, MD
23b. Address: 6505 Atlantic
23c. Date Signed: 10/13/65
24a. Burial
24b. Date: Oct 13, 1965
24c. Name of Cemetery: Woodbine Brotherhood
24d. Location (City, State): Woodbine, NJ [See photo of his stone here.]

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Moskowitz Cousins in Census Records

As I have written before, my mother-in-law, "A", has enjoyed sharing family memories with me and I have been able to use her memories to find out a little bit more about these families in online records.

Her father's mother was Sheva Moskowitz. I first found reference to Sarah Moskowitz on Morris Goldstein's death certificate. (Sarah is an Americanized version of the name Sheva.) I'm not sure if Sheva ever immigrated from Romania to America, though three of her children did (Max, Anna, and Morris Goldstein). Sheva's brother was known to "A" as great uncle Morris Moskowitz. I had the name in my Family Tree Maker genealogy program for quite a while, but had never done much research on him. Recently, I asked about him and heard the following stories.

"A" grew up in Woodbine, New Jersey, but had plenty of relatives who still lived in the New York City area. "A" remembers visiting Uncle Morris at his home on Long Island (likely in the late 1930's or early 1940's). She remembers that he had a dry goods store on Long Island and that he was very successful. He was a tall, thin man with a very kind wife. They had three daughters, but she couldn't remember their names. One daughter married a very nice man who practiced law. Another daughter married a man with the surname Mann, and the third daughter married after the war, but she couldn't remember his name. She does remember visiting Radio City Music Hall with this cousin and her boyfriend (or husband) when her brother Stanley returned from his war service.

In his later years, great Uncle Morris lost his eyesight, possibly due to diabetes, she thinks. In his apartment, he had a string to guide him from his bedroom to his living room to his kitchen. At this time, he spent most of his time in his apartment, as he was too ashamed to be seen in public, where he would be recognized by many former customers and he wouldn't be able to recognize them, due to his blindness. She doesn't remember exactly when he died, but believes it was in the early to mid 1950's.

"A" remembers that she drove to Long Island to visit the family after she got her driver's license (early to mid 1940's), but doesn't remember this family ever visiting her family in New Jersey.

With this information, I started searching census records on ancestry.com.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

One Blogging Year into this Journey

I started this blog one year ago as a separate blog from my first one (From Maine to Kentucky), because researching my husband's ancestors is quite different from researching mine. During this year, in addition to being able to share family information based on research I had done over the past several years, I also was able to share documents, photographs, and stories newly discovered this year.

Through Blogger, I am able to view some basic statistics about which of my posts are most often viewed.

The top five blog posts by number of views are:
  1. Amanuensis Monday ~ Max Levitt's Death Certificate - I'm not sure why this is the most popular of the posts. Although this document provided me with a father's name, the mother's name is "unknown."
  2. Military Monday ~ WWII brothers die in action - This doesn't surprise me. Stories of brothers dying in any war are poignant and I'm glad that I am able to keep these men's memories alive.
  3. Tuesday's Tip: Passenger Lists... - This was number one for quite awhile. This is a post where I made discoveries as I wrote because I was analyzing the documents so closely. I feel that it is a good example of what you can find when you analyze passenger lists very closely.
  4. Tombstone Tuesday ~ Woodbine Brotherhood Cemetery (Part 2) - This is the second of three posts I wrote about family members buried in a small Jewish cemetery in New Jersey. I'll venture a guess that this one is more popular than the others because of the additional Hebrew on these stones for which I was able to obtain a translation.
  5. Josef Handler's Naturalization papers - This shows what a treasure naturalization papers can be. I was thrilled to find digitized naturalization papers at Fold3 for my husband's grandfather which included birth dates for his older siblings.
Although I was hoping to post once a week (on average), this is the 46th post of my first year, so I didn't quite keep up that pace. I hope to continue at a pace of about one post a week.

Thanks to geneabloggers in general and Geneabloggers, the website, for the support and encouragement to share family stories for my husband's family and others to enjoy. Thank you to the distant cousins who have reached out to me and shared what they could. And thank you to those of you who continue to read my blog; I hope you've been enjoying it and continue to read it!