Wordless Wednesday ~ Romanian Wedding Couple, June 1947

Another of the many photographs from my mother-in-law that came from her father's family in Romania and Israel in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. I am sharing them here in hopes of reconnecting with this branch of my husband's family.

The photographer's imprint is "Studio FotoSelect Iasi" so I know this is a relative (or possibly very close family friend) on the Goldstein side of the family.

The top is Romanian and is translated:
____ offered with love to my uncle and aunt, by me Paul and [Hilda?]

8 June 1947

The bottom is Yiddish and is upside down in this image. The possibilities include:

This is my sister ____ husband 
Mendele / Menale [?]

This is my ____ with my sister Gendel / Manela [?]

Any other suggestions on the translation are very welcome.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Romanian Wedding Couple 1929

Another of the many photographs from my mother-in-law that came from her father's family in Romania. This one happens to be dated 20/4/1929 (or April 20, 1929, for us Americans). I am sharing them here in hopes of reconnecting with this branch of my husband's family.

For
our dear brother
sister in law and children
Manase Lots (or soți)
Goldstein
20/4/1929

Mister Moritz Goldstein
New York

Moische/Morris Goldstein was my mother-in-law's father. He was living in New York City with his wife, Rose, and two young children. (By the following year, the family had moved to Woodbine, New Jersey.)

Somehow, I doubt that this was mailed to Morris Goldstein in New York in this way, without an envelope. There were dozens of men by the name of Morris Goldstein in New York City in the 1920s...

If anyone has suggestions on the translation, feel free to comment.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Usher and his Family

Another of the many photographs from my mother-in-law that came from her father's family in Romania and Israel in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. I am sharing them here in hopes of reconnecting with this branch of my husband's family.

1. This is my daughter's husband Mordecai
2. This is my daughter Sheva and her two children
3. My daughter-in-law Dadie [?] with her child Goldie
4. My son Ezriel
         From me and my children
                                              Usher

~~~~~~~~~~~

Usher is a younger brother to Morris Goldstein. These young children are second cousins to my husband.

Thank you to volunteers at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston's "Help Day" in January 2014, as well as volunteers at Tracing the Tribe Facebook page for assistance in the translation.

Wordless Wednesday ~ Sheva, Mordecai and Tziva

Another of the many photographs from my mother-in-law that came from her father's family in Romania and Israel in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. I am sharing them here in hopes of reconnecting with this branch of my husband's family.

This is my daughter Sheva and her husband
Her husband's name is Mordecai and
their child Tziva

I believe the person who wrote this is my husband's great uncle Usher Goldstein (or Yancu or Yancovitz), brother to Morris Goldstein (1897-1965).

(Siblings Morris, Max, and Anna immigrated to America from Romania; Usher and his brother Shmuel immigrated to Israel.)

Thank you to volunteers at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston's "Help Day" in January 2014 for assistance in the translation.

November 17 update: And thank you to R. Shoshi Balbirer, member of Tracing the Tribe Facebook page who let me know the original image was upside down! (I have corrected it.)

Wordless Wednesday ~ Ethel, Rachel and Roza

I have several photographs from my mother-in-law that came from her father's family in Romania and Israel in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. I am sharing them here in hopes of reconnecting with this branch of my husband's family.

The back is in Yiddish and I had help with the translation when I attended a "Help Day" meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston a couple of years ago. Let me know in the comments if you have anything to add about the translation.

Wordless Wednesday ~ George Levitt, Wife and Mother-in-Law

According to my mother-in-law's handwriting on the back of this photo, this is "George, Betty + Mrs. Brodsky (Betty's mother)"

George Levitt was the oldest brother of my mother-in-law's mother, Rose. He lived in Philadelphia. I have written about his wife, Elizabeth Girfman, and his mother-in-law, Sarah Brodsky, who applied for naturalization in 1927. I have also shared some U.S. Census records for the family from 1920 and from 1930 and 1940.

George died in 1965 at 64 years old and Sarah died in 1968 in her 80s. Too bad I can't see the car that's behind George and Betty to help date this photo, but I'm guessing this was taken in the late 1940s or 1950s.

Mining Ancestry.com Hints by Specific Record Collection

Randy Seaver, author of Genea-Musings, has again shared a wonderful hint on Mining Ancestry.com Hints by Specific Record Collection. Do click through to his blog post to see his explanation on how to do it.

The example he used was for the U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936-2007, where I have found some interesting facts for my family and my husband's family. (I shared one when this database was new on Ancestry.com.)

I want to share another interesting example in this database from my husband's family. Elizabeth (Girfanan or Girfanun or Girfman) Levitt was my mother-in-law's Aunt Betty.

This record, from the Social Security Application and Claims Index, 1936-2007, at Ancestry.com, shows that Sarah's maiden name was Brodsky and her father's name was Garson Girfanan (or Girfanan). Elizabeth's mother, Sarah Brodsky, immigrated from Russia as a young mother with her toddler daughter. I shared her naturalization papers here, one of which states that her husband is deceased.

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Uncle Max and Aunt Lottie

Max Goldstein was brother to Morris Goldstein, my husband's grandfather. The Hebrew on his gravestone reads:

Here lies Menachem Mendel son of Mr. Yitzchak

Lottie (Rosen) Goldstein was Max's wife. The Hebrew on her gravestone reads:

Here lies Lottie daughter of Mr. Lieb

They are buried at Mount Judah Cemetery, Ridgewood, Queens, New York, in the same cemetery as Anna Goldstein, sister of Max and Morris.

Y-DNA Haplogroup for Morris Goldstein

I am slowly but surely getting a few more cousins to test their DNA.

A refresher: Y-DNA is passed down from father to son. To determine the Y-DNA of my husband's grandfathers, I can test my husband for his paternal grandfather's Y-DNA, but I needed a male cousin, son of the brother of my mother-in-law, in order to determine the Y-DNA of my husband's other grandfather.

A picture may help visualize what I'm trying to explain. The rectangles represent men; the "cropped" rectangles represent women (who do not carry Y-DNA and therefore cannot pass it to their children).

My husband, SH, is in haplogroup R-M198, as I wrote about at Y-DNA and Haplogroup Result. He received this Y-DNA from his father, Harry, who received it from his father, Josef, who received it from his father, Aaron.

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Anna Goldstein, d. 1918

My husband and I visited New York City last week and of course, there were trips to cemeteries.

Mount Judah Cemetery is in Ridgewood, which is in Queens (though the closest subway stop is in Brooklyn).  The website includes a burial search, which provides the location of the burial of the person you're looking for. The About Us page includes information that helps a searcher locate where in the cemetery the loved one is buried.

Because of the wealth of resources available to FindAGrave volunteers, I'm a bit surprised that there are currently over 800 photo requests for this cemetery. I encourage FindAGrave volunteers local to this area to help fulfill these requests.

My husband's maternal grandfather has a sister and brother buried at Mount Judah in the Dr. Igel Lodge Society, one of the dozens of societies in this large cemetery.

My husband and I looked for his relatives and we easily found his great uncle and aunt, but couldn't find Anna Goldstein, for whom his mother is named. It appeared that there was a large yew bush planted where we expected a gravestone for her. Before we left the cemetery, I decided I would walk all the way to the back of the section, just to see what I could see.

Good thing I did.

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Harry Handler

My father-in-law died in March (I previously shared the obituary) and a few weeks ago, the family gathered again at Woodbine Brotherhood Cemetery in Woodbine, New Jersey for the unveiling of the gravestone.

The Hebrew reads: Tzvi Hersh son of Joseph the Levite and Lena

The family plot is mostly relatives of my mother-in-law and Handler was added to the plot stone.

See other gravestones at this plot here and here. My mother-in-law's grandparents' stones can be seen here.

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Sally Handler (d. 1932)

Here lies

Our dear (or beloved) mother

Chaya Sarah daughter of Mr. Tzvi

Died 25 Tishrei 5693

Mother

Sally Handler

Died Oct. 25, 1932

Age 78 Yrs.

I got help with the Hebrew translation by the Steve Morse Deciphering Hebrew Tombstone Dates in One Step and JewishGen's Reading Hebrew Tombstones, as well as confirmation via the Tracing the Tribe Facebook Group.

This is my husband's great-grandmother, buried in Lansing Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio. I wrote about finding this at Great-Grandmother Sarah or Sally Handler.

Sally's youngest grandson was my father-in-law, who died this past March and whose gravestone will be unveiled this coming weekend. He was named after Sally's father.

Many thanks to FindAGrave volunteer PatMaruna for fulfilling my longtime photo request for Sally Handler's memorial.

DNA ~ Chromosome Browser and Endogamy

This is a continuation of the DNA ~ Second Cousin post where I share some screenshots of the chromosome browser at GEDmatch.

The chromosome browser on GEDmatch is a little different than the one at FamilyTreeDNA (for those of you who have seen those results).  In the graphical results, each color represents a different length of cM (centimorgan, a unit of measurement of DNA). A user should look for red, orange and yellow (and maybe green) when scanning through the browser results. (You can also just look at the numerical results.)

When the GEDmatch user selects two or more DNA test results and compares them in the chromosome browser, the user sees numbers which represent where along the chromosome (and for how long) the match is.

DNA ~ Second Cousin Results at AncestryDNA and GEDmatch

A second cousin (GS) has tested with AncestryDNA which shows that he shares 251 cM (centimorgans - a unit of DNA measurement) of DNA across 16 segments. This indicates a second cousin relationship, which we knew. They have the same great-grandparents: Aaron and Rozalia (Szali) Handler. (See their 1882 marriage record from Ilok, Serbia.)

Screen shot from AncestryDNA results

There are plenty of resources at AncestryDNA for a user to learn about and understand the results, and those testing at Ancestry should definitely upload a family tree, which makes this process much more useful for all. However, AncestryDNA does not have a chromosome browser.

I asked that this cousin upload the results to GEDmatch so I could compare his results with the results I have from FamilyTreeDNA and I can compare the DNA results using the chromosome browser there.

For more information about GEDmatch, visit the FAQ pages or the main page of the GEDmatch Wiki. It is a free resource though donations are accepted. (If you have a membership at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, watch this Legacy Family Tree webinar to learn more about GEDmatch.)

Happy Fifth Blogiversary

This is post number 193 in five years of blogging. I do have more to share and will do my best to have at least a couple of posts each month.

During this past year, I completed a series of Surname Saturday posts where I shared the ancestral lines of my husband's family:

Handler (from Ljuba, Erdevik, Ilok, in former Hungary (then Yugoslavia, now Serbia))
Goldstein (from Iaşi, Romania)
Hollander (from Bonyhád, Hungary)
Levitas/Levitt (from Husiatyń, in former Galicia, Austria, now Ukraine)
Honenvald (from Hőgyész, Hungary)
Segal (from Shytomir/Zhytomyr, Ukraine)
Moskowitz (from Iaşi, Romania)

In the coming year I hope to share more about using DNA. I would like to use a chromosome browser to display how my husband and his parents are related to known cousins and then figure out how they are related to genetic cousins whose exact relationship is unknown. AncestryDNA doesn't have a chromosome browser, but FamilyTreeDNA and GEDmatch do. GEDmatch is free, but a transfer in of data is needed. It's very easy to transfer data from other DNA testing websites.

If I enough cousins have their DNA tested, I can explore Kitty Cooper's Chromosome Mapper tool, as displayed at Lara Diamond's Lara's Jewnealogy blog.

I also want to share some more of the many photographs that I have of this family.

And, of course, if there are any exciting new finds, I will be sure to share them.

Thank you to those of you who continue to read my blog even if I don't post very often.

USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein ~ The Applications

When I last wrote about Morris Goldstein's C-File, I said that there was more work he had to do to obtain the replacement citizenship certificate that he wanted (and presumably needed).

The next documents are two applications with the same heading (see image) - one handwritten and another typed. There was a $10 fee for obtaining this replacement Certificate of Citizenship.

The handwritten application is dated 18th day of April 1931.

This is Morris Goldstein's signature and someone else's handwritten "Woodbine, N.J." which is in different handwriting than in the previous post (which was his wife's handwriting), so perhaps he dictated it to the notary public who notarized the application.

There is an undated letter from the Commissioner of Naturalization (U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Naturalization) which states that the naturalization paper is being returned to "be amended and promptly returned to this office." Three months later, there is a typed application.

USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein ~ His Letter to Washington, D.C.

I am sharing documents that I received as part of the USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein, my husband's grandfather. I first shared a 1918 Certificate of Citizenship for a Rhode Island Morris Goldstein and the replacement 1931 Certificate for Pop-pop (as he was known to his grandchildren).

I have concluded that this file has combined two men of the same name, born within a few months of each other in 1897. One immigrated to Boston in August 1913 and the other to New York City in August 1914.

Additional documents in this file include the July 1918 petition for naturalization for Morris Goldstein of Central Falls, Rhode Island, where he states that he was born in Brest, Russia. His occupation was "Machinist." (This signature looks like "signature #1" in the previous post: Comparing Signatures.)

Pop-pop was a tailor and spent his entire working life in the garment industry in New York City and in Woodbine, New Jersey.

Letterhead from March 5, 1931 letter

The C-File file also includes most of the correspondence that Pop-pop had with government officials as he tried to get a replacement citizenship certificate. There is a March 5, 1931, letter from a Major General at the War Department letting him know that "No record has been found in this office of the naturalization papers of Morris Goldstein, Army Serial No. 4,489,126." (This serial number agrees with the abstract of his service that I shared in January 2014.) He is instructed to contact the Commissioner of Naturalization, Department of Labor, Washington, D.C.

USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein ~ Comparing Signatures

In the previous post about the USCIS Citizenship File for Morris Goldstein, I shared a 1918 Certificate of Naturalization for Morris Goldstein of Rhode Island and a 1931 replacement Certificate of Naturalization for Morris Goldstein of Woodbine, New Jersey.

Did you notice the additional difference of the signatures?

Signature from the 1918 Certificate of Naturalization for Morris Goldstein of Rhode Island

Signature from the 1918 World War I Draft Card for Morris Goldstein (Pop-pop) of Forsyth Street, Manhattan

Signature from the 1931 replacement Certificate of Naturalization for Morris Goldstein, now of Woodbine, New Jersey

I suggest that the third signature looks much more like the second one not the first one.

The next post in the series will show additional correspondence I received as part of this C-File: USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein ~ His Letter to Washington, D.C.

USCIS C-File for Morris Goldstein

About a year ago, I shared the Certificate of Citizenship for my husband's grandfather, Morris Goldstein. It was a re-issued certificate for one that had been lost. I was confused because there were several facts on this certificate that conflicted with what I already knew about Morris.

Emily Garber of (going) the Extra Yad asked if I had applied for Morris' file with the USCIS genealogy program. I decided this was a good idea and started the process a few weeks after that blog post.

A C-File is a Certificate File, which documents an individual's naturalization. C-Files contain copies of records that show the granting of naturalized U.S. citizenship by courts between 1906 and 1956.

The first place to go is USCIS / Genealogy.

I first requested an index search in case there was more than one file number. It turns out that the number on the Certificate of Citizenship was the one file number that was returned: 984234. It took a little over three months to get this.

A little more than four months after submitting the request for the C-File, I received the twelve photocopied pages in the mail. I scanned the images and did my best to transcribe them.

It confirmed for me that yes, this Morris Goldstein (known as Pop-pop to his grandchildren) was mixed up with another Morris Goldstein of Rhode Island.

One Jewish Family's DNA Ethnicity Results

I have previously written about AncestryDNA's ethnicity results for my husband here. Since then, I have transferred his DNA to FamilyTreeDNA which is how I connected with a fourth cousin (which I wrote about here.)

FamilyTreeDNA also offers ethnicity results. These come from doing an autosomal DNA test (as opposed to a Y-DNA test or a mitochondrial DNA test). An autosomal DNA test can help a genealogist find cousins, like the fourth cousin mentioned above. I'm not going to get into all the details of DNA testing, but if you're interested, you can read a blog post I wrote at my other blog, Autosomal DNA Testing with FamilyTreeDNA, and you can explore the FTDNA Learning Center.

I thought I'd share one example of why it's interesting and helpful to have both parents tested. (It's also interesting to have all siblings tested, which I have done in my family and you can see those results at From Maine to Kentucky.)

The following colorful images are from FamilyTreeDNA's MyOrigins feature, which shows estimates of an individual's ethnicity going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. The key word here is estimate - this is really just a fun way to see where your distant ancestors came from.

Before my father-in-law died, I was able to get him to donate his DNA for the genealogical cause. This was interesting because he is about as Ashkenazi Jewish as you can get, at 99%:

Father's DNA

My mother-in-law's DNA is only 84% Ashkenazi Jewish with 12% Middle Eastern and 4% Western/Central European:

Mother's DNA

Not surprisingly, my husband has 92% Ashkenazi Jewish DNA from his father and his mother, but it's likely that his 5% Middle Eastern DNA and 3% European DNA came from his mother.

Son's DNA

Please remember that these are estimates, and are for fun. Because my in-laws' ancestors have been in this country for only one or two generations and Jewish family trees have a lot of endogamy (a lot of marrying within the same group of ancestors), there are tons of matches at FamilyTreeDNA for all three of these family members. Even though my father-in-law and my mother-in-law are not related (at least not within recent generations), they often show the same matches of others who have tested at FamilyTreeDNA and have a lot of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.

I thank my husband and his parents for scraping the insides of their cheeks for me and I am hoping that more family members will consider taking an autosomal DNA test because there is more to learn than our ethnic makeup. I hope to share more about DNA results in a future blog post.

Wedding Wednesday ~ Anita and Harry

January 27, 1952, was the wedding day for my parents-in-law: the first day of over 64 years of a very happy marriage.

Harry died last month and I shared his obituary here.

Birthplaces Pedigree ~ Jewish Ancestral Version

Many genealogists have been sharing this table for their ancestors, showing birthplaces for five generations. Mine can be found at my blog, From Maine to Kentucky. My ancestors for five generations were born in the U.S. so the blocks all show U.S. state names.

My husband's is different:

Only four born in the U.S. and the rest born in eastern Europe. I have recently discovered (on his death record) that his great grandfather, Aron / Adolf Handler was born in Bonyhad, Hungary, and I am making an assumption that his parents were born in Hungary.

I am also assuming that his maternal grandfather's parents and grandparents were all born in Romania.

You can see that the color is a paler shade where I am not positive about the birth location (Hungary, Romania, Galicia).

This is a fun exercise and genealogists have been posting these on Facebook for the past couple of days.

Sunday's Obituary ~ Harry Handler (1922-2016)

HANDLER, HARRY - age 93 of Ventnor, N.J. passed away [on March 7, 2016] lovingly surrounded by his family.

Harry was born in Akron, Ohio. He moved to the Atlantic City area in 1950 to help his older brother Art start an appliance and tire store in Atlantic City. Harry's expertise as a salesman and his youthful energy to do whatever was asked of him, contributed tremendously to what became a highly successful appliance store - still in business today. Harry was the manager of the second store located in Pleasantville. While manager, he met many Pleasantville residents and quickly made a reputation as someone who could offer appliances for every budget - from top-of-the-line to "used but not abused" (his favorite expression). Generation after generation came in to buy appliances, always asking only for Harry.

Harry served his country honorably during WWII, stationed in New Guinea. Tragically, his two older brothers - Alfred and Louis - were killed within 15 days of each other, tragedies that sent Harry stateside for the remainder of the war with the responsibility of guarding German POWs.

After his retirement from the appliance store, he loved to tend to his vegetable garden where he grew tomatoes, eggplant, and zucchini. Harry was not the type to sit in a rocking chair letting time pass; he always kept busy, either finding chores in the house or outside tending to his plants and vegetables. In fact, keeping busy was key to his longevity. He was a tough guy who survived three different cancers, finally succumbing at 93.

He loved to make his family laugh, often mimicking the catch phrases of popular television commercials. He loved old gangster movies starring James Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield.

Surviving is the love of his life Anita Handler (married 64 years); sons Joseph (Jodi), Mark (Linda), Alan (Michelle) and Steven (Elizabeth) Handler; grandchildren Melanie Caruso (Chris), Kenneth, Rachel, Jesse, Daniel, David and Matthew Handler; also, many nieces and nephews. Harry is predeceased by his parents Joseph and Lena Handler; brothers Arthur, Alfred, and Louis Handler; sisters Belle Dorman and Margaret Levine.

~~~~~~~~~

Thank you to Mark Handler, who wrote this obituary and gave permission for me to share it on my blog.

KehilaLinks at JewishGen

JewishGen.org (a favorite website for those researching their Jewish ancestry), offers many resources, as I have shared previously. I receive occasional emails noting updates to the KehilaLinks project and I thought I'd share links to my husband's ancestral communities in one blog post for reference.

What is KehilaLinks? 

From the website: "KehilaLinks is a project facilitating web pages commemorating the places where Jews have lived. KehilaLinks provides the opportunity for anyone with an interest in a place to create web pages about that community. These web pages may contain information, pictures, databases, and links to other sources providing data about that place."

These pages are coordinated by volunteers. Some have more information than others. And there are not pages for every community, but where there is a page, it can provide additional background to your research.

I found the following:

Iaşi, Romania where Morris and Max Goldstein came from.

Shytomir/Zhitomir/Zhytomyr, Ukraine where Simche Segal came from.

Husiatyń/Gusyatin, Ukraine (formerly part of Galicia, Austria) where the Lewites / Levitt family came from (Max, Emanuel, and Sophie).

Farming Communities of NJ (specifically, Woodbine, New Jersey) where the Goldsteins and Levitts settled and where my mother-in-law grew up.

There is not a page for Hőgyész, Hungary, where Anna Honenvald's family was from. The KehilaLinks page for Hungary will show any updates and additions.

There is also not a KehilaLink page for Bonyhád, Hungary, but there is a Yizkor Book page which references Bonyhad: a destroyed community; the Jews of Bonyhad, Hungary, a book by Leslie Blau, from which a KehilaLink page could probably be created. This is where the Hollander family was from, and where the Handler family was originally from before an ancestor moved from there to Ljuba (now in Serbia).

Yizkor Book Project is another wonderful resource from JewishGen. Yizkor books, usually put together by survivors of the Holocaust, were written after the Holocaust as memorials to Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust.  They might contain descriptions and histories of the community, biographies of prominent people, and lists of people who perished. I do own the book for Bonyhád, which gives a wonderful sense of what the community was like before the war.

There don't appear to be any pages for communities in what is now Serbia and Croatia. The Handler family, before immigrating to Akron, Ohio, came from Ljuba, near Erdevik, Serbia, and Ilok, Croatia.

Have you explored the KehilaLinks pages for your Jewish ancestral community? You won't necessarily find your family name, but if you do find your community in this database, you can learn more about the history of the community and explore a variety of different resources.

Wedding Wednesday ~ Adolf Handler and Sali Handler, 1882

Here is another one of the records that the researcher from Šid, Serbia, shared with me.

This record, along with other records in this archives, helps to confirm the story that my husband's great-grandparents were related.

I have split the horizontal record into two sections, for easier reading.

Sympathy Saturday ~ Adolf Handler's Death Record

As I recently noted, a researcher in Šid, Serbia, contacted me via JewishGen's Family Finder and shared with me some digital images from the local archives.

This is the death record for my husband's great grandfather, Aron / Adolf Handler. When he died, he left several adult children, but also four young children from his second wife: Rose, Josef, Sam, and Regina.

Again, I have taken the long horizontal entry and split it into two pieces for easier reading. And again, I got help with the translation from Google Translate.

Researching Jewish Ancestors? Use JewishGen Family Finder!

The Internet, and especially JewishGen, has made researching Jewish ancestors easier than it might have been just a few years ago.

In November, I shared Handler Birth Transcriptions at JewishGen with the news that the Hungarian Databases at JewishGen had added a new database of transcribed records from Erdevik, Serbia, which included some Handler ancestors.

JewishGen also has the JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF), where a researcher can enter surnames and places being researched. In August 2012, I added some of my husband's family names in the JGFF. I just added a couple of new ones. This is what my Family Finder list looks like:

I am very excited to report that the Serbian researcher from Šid, Serbia, who transcribed the records from the Historical archive Srem - Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia, contacted me after seeing my interest in family from Ilok, Croatia (in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 19th and early 20th centuries), which is a community just over the border from Erdevik, Serbia, where he is researching. He has provided me with a family tree of information about the Handler family!

New Year's Resolutions

This is a cross-post from my other blog: From Maine to Kentucky, though there are a few differences.

I generally avoid New Year's Resolutions, but this year, with the announcement that Family Tree Maker is being retired, it prompted me to share my primary genealogy resolutions for 2016: By the end of 2016, I will have decided on a new genealogy software program and will have "cleaned up" my data, especially sources, in the process.

I have been reading about Thomas MacEntee's Genealogy Do-Over and I think that if I am exploring new genealogy software in 2016 then it's a good year for a Do-Over (or at least a Go-Over: I have over 5,000 people in my primary tree and I don't want to enter everyone from scratch). I also have a few separate family trees in Family Tree Maker for extended family members and I have to decide if I want to put all of these trees together into one big family tree, or if I want to keep separate trees for the extended family members and create a separate family tree for my husband and his ancestors.

See Genealogy Do-Over: 2016 Topics for more information. You can subscribe to this blog by RSS feed or by email. There is also a Facebook Group for the Genealogy Do-Over where members are very helpful.

If I don't blog as often as I did last year, it's because I'm working on cleaning up my Family Tree Maker database in order to transfer it to new software. I will blog about interesting stories that I find during this "Genealogy Go-Over" process.