Mystery Monday ~ Max and Gussie Levitt's First Child

Way back in the early days of this blog, I shared census records for my husband's great-grandparents, Max Levitt and Golda Segal in Woodbine, New Jersey. (See Mystery Monday ~ Levitts in Woodbine.)

Specifically, in the 1900 U. S. Federal Census for Dennis Township, Cape May County, New Jersey, I found the family of Max Levitt.

1900 U.S. Federal Census, Dennis Township, Cape May County, New Jersey; Roll: T623_960; Page: 18B;
Enumeration District: 113. Record for Max Levitt.

Max Levitt is listed as born in August 1868 in Australia (should be 1857-58 in Austria) and has been married for three years to wife, Rebecca (should be Gussie), who, in this census, was reportedly born in Russia in May 1877. (Her passenger list reports a birth year of 1869.)

The children living with them were Minnie (age 12), Rebecca (age 11), Davis (age 10), and Daniel (age 1, b. Dec 1898). The census indicates that the wife had given birth to one child, who was still living. It is logical that the wife's one child is Daniel and that the three older children were Max's from an earlier marriage.

My mother-in-law doesn't recognize Minnie or Daniel as siblings or half-siblings of her mother, Rose (not born until 1902), but perhaps Daniel died as an infant, so even Rose may not have known about him. (Minnie is still a mystery.) As I have shared previously, in the 1910 census, the family reports that Gussie had given birth to four children, and all four were living, so that makes one-year-old Daniel in the 1900 census even more mysterious.

Since George, the known oldest brother in the family, was not born until November 1900, this 1-year-old boy couldn't be him.

I recently found the New Jersey index to records of births, marriages, and deaths, 1848-1900 online at FamilySearch.org and I think I have partially solved this mystery. (Note that you do need to be at a Family History Center to view the images for births and deaths.)

DNA ~ Grandparents and Grandsons

Earlier this year, both of my sons agreed to having their DNA tested. Because my autosomal DNA is primarily British Isles with a little bit of Scandinavia and West and Central Europe, and my husband's DNA is about 96% Ashkenazi, it makes it interesting to view our children's admixture (or ethnicity) results.

I always like to make it clear that with ethnicity results that they are estimates and can vary dramatically depending on the reference populations that the DNA is compared with, as well as the regional definitions used by the DNA testing companies.

In fact, where the majority of my DNA is British Isles with 8% West and Central Europe (according to FamilyTreeDNA), Son#1 shows 48% of West and Central Europe and no British Isles. Son#2 shows 43% West and Central Europe and 11% British Isles. Neither show Scandinavia. (This may have to do with the fact that my first DNA test was with AncestryDNA (in November 2011) and I transferred the raw data to FTDNA, and my sons tested directly with FTDNA.)

Because I have tested three of their four grandparents (my father, who would have been fascinated with all of this, died in 1993), I was able to determine how much DNA each son inherited from each grandparent. (See my parents-in-law ethnicity results as of April 2016 at One Jewish Family's DNA Ethnicity Results; since then, they have changed slightly as FTDNA has updated their database.)