Emanuel Levitas Naturalization in New York Eastern District

Interestingly, the surname of Levitas is not that common, so once I found Max Levitt's brother, Emanuel Levitas, in New York City, I was able to find quite a bit about him by searching for the surname Levitas.

Since I shared Max Levitt's Cape May County, New Jersey, Naturalization records, I thought I would share Emanuel Levitas' Naturalization records.

I found these records at Fold3.com, and they're available on Ancestry.com as well. The source information is Petitions for Naturalization, Eastern District, New York, New York, 1904; Petition Volume: 60. Petition Number: 246, for Emanuel Levitas.

Emanuel arrived in the U.S. before his brother Max, and he lived in Newark, New Jersey, for a short time. It was here that he first filed a Declaration of Intention to become a citizen.

On July 3, 1893, in Essex County, New Jersey, Emanuel Levitas declared his intention to become a citizen of the United States and to renounce his allegiance to the Emperor of Austria.

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Max Levitt's Naturalization in Cape May, New Jersey

As I have mentioned before, one of the family stories is that my mother-in-law's grandfather, Max Levitt, changed his name from Levitas, because he thought it sounded "too fancy." I have been trying to find proof of this, but in the late 19th century, there wasn't always a requirement that someone making a name change had to do it officially through the courts.

So I'm trying to see if he ever used Levitas, but I have only ever found him as Levitt, starting in the 1900 U.S. Federal Census. (See Levitts in Woodbine. And I have not found him in the 1895 New Jersey State Census.)

More recently, I found that he became a naturalized citizen using the name Max Levitt. Sometimes naturalization paperwork will indicate a name change, noting that the person used another name previously, but not in this case, so I'm guessing that he had been going by the name of Levitt by the time he filed the following paperwork.

On FamilySearch.org, I recently found New Jersey, Cape May County, New Jersey, County Naturalization Records, 1749-1986, which is not indexed, so I had to browse to find Max Levitt. I was pretty sure he was in Cape May, New Jersey, and sure enough, he was the only Levitt in Declarations of Intention 1896-1906.

This Declaration of Intention, made at the Court of Common Pleas in Cape May County (New Jersey) tells me that on October 20, 1900, Max Levitt, a native of Austria, now residing at Woodbine, Cape May County (New Jersey), age about 35, renounces his allegiance to the Emperor of Austria. This is his first step to becoming a U.S. Citizen.

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Max Levitt's Brother is Emanuel Levitas

For some reason, the most viewed post on this blog is Amanuensis Monday ~ Max Levitt's Death Certificate. His father is listed as Moses L. Levitt, born in Austria.

The family story is that Max Levitt (d. 1935) changed his name to Levitt from Levitas because he thought Levitas "sounded too fancy." My mother-in-law remembers that her maternal grandfather Max Levitt had a sister, Sophie, who married Samuel Litwin, (I wrote about one of their sons here) and a brother, who ran a garter manufacturing company in New York City. I am collecting more information on these siblings with the hope of finding out more about Max Levitt's origins.

Since my mother-in-law couldn't remember Max's brother's given name, I started by searching census records at ancestry.com for the surname Levitas in New York City (all boroughs), no first name, born in Austria in 1865 +/- 5 years. The top results show a given name of Emanuel (or a variation on the name):

Sure enough, when I looked at a couple of the images, the occupation is Manufacturer of Garters:

1910 U.S. Census, Brooklyn, NY: occupation for Emanuel Levitas

1920 U.S. Census, Brooklyn, NY: occupation for Emanuel Levitas

So I've started with census records (Federal census records, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, N.Y State census records for 1905 and 1915, and New Jersey State census record for 1895) and pieced together this family. Soon I hope to share more of what I have found on this Levitas family beyond census records.

See the family in a variety of census records from 1895 to 1915 here. And see them in more census records from 1920 to 1940 here.

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday ~ The Photo Genealogist Looks at Hollanders in Hungary

Last week, when I attended the IAJGS 2013 Conference, I had the opportunity to have Ava Cohn, the Photo Genealogist, take a look at a photo that I shared in May 2012. It is believed to be of the Hollander family in Bonyhad, Hungary.

As I noted in the original post, family members believed that the woman sitting on the left was the mother of Lena (Hollander) Handler, named Anna Honenvald (or Honevald). However, Ava took a look at this photo and the one I have of Lena with her first-born son, Arthur, which I also shared in May 2012,

Arthur Handler (b. 1910), and his mother, Lena (Hollander) Handler

and said that she couldn't be Lena's mother; there was no family resemblance. Ava does think that the woman who is standing in the group photograph is related to Lena and could be a sister. She also noted that the two men at the right look like father (sitting) and son (standing).

Ava agreed that the 1911 date of the photo of Arthur and Lena is accurate and feels that the group photo is from the 1920's, 1919 at the very earliest. As I noted when I originally shared this photo, I need to continue to explore Hungarian Civil Records at FamilySearch.org to learn more about the family who remained in Hungary and see if I can possibly identify anyone else in the above photo. My working theory is that this is Lena's sister and family and she sent the photo to Lena in Ohio to remember her family by.

IAJGS 2013 Conference - Second Half Report

IAJGS 2013 is a five and a half day conference. I wrote about my first three days of learning here. I took a break on Wednesday, and returned for more on Thursday and Friday.

Following are the sessions I attended on the last two days of the conference and my comments on them. I heard mostly very good things about this conference and the speakers. I am glad that I was able to take advantage of attending such an extraordinary conference so close to home.


Thursday
The Coming "Big Bang" in Genealogical Research: Automated Matching of Databases and Family Trees with Adam Brown & Randy Schoenberg, who are actively involved with Geni.com, an online collaborative family tree.
Adam and Randy talked about Geni.com, a moderated online family tree and resource for collaborative genealogy research. This website also provides opportunities for researchers to set  up a Geni project and invite researchers to collaborate.

Who the Heck is Ida Gerskill: Some Challenges of Researching Jewish Names with Meredith Hoffman, a professional genealogist with a degree in linguistics.
This session built on the session I attended on Monday, with Warren Blatt, on Jewish surnames. The take away is to remember that spelling doesn't count when you're trying to research your Jewish ancestors - there are a ton of reasons why names appear differently in all these records. Meredith also provided a few ideas about looking for a mother's maiden name and an ancestral town name.

Immigrant Clues in Photographs with Maureen Taylor, an internationally-known photography expert. Her knowledge complements that of Ava Cohn, whom I heard at the start of the conference.
Her talk focused on late 19th century and early 20th century photographs, of which she had many examples. She used these examples to explain what to look for to help identify the date, location and reason for the photo.

Best Search Strategies on Ancestry.com with Crista Cowan, whom I heard speak on Monday.
I enjoy listening to Crista speak (she handles a crowd very well), but I realize that I know how to explore Ancestry.com pretty well now. I did hear a couple of good reminders that I will share with you. First, a user can set the Collection Priority when doing a search; scroll down to the bottom of the Advanced Search page to find the Collection Priority box. (See an example of the drop-down box at right; you can see that "Jewish" is one of the choices.) Also, when you have done a search and have that results page, RIGHT-CLICK to open a the result in a new tab so you don't lose that initial results page if you want to systematically work through the results.

And in some cases, you might want to search by location: where you see "Any Event," enter a location with no name - this will give results for that location. As you may guess, this only works well for smaller locations in the U.S. and in some foreign collections.

Interestingly, in her introduction, Crista emphasized that if you have your tree on Ancestry.com, it remains yours; you collaborate with other Ancestry.com users only if you want to. This, of course, is in contrast to Geni.com, the collaborative family tree site. Neither system is "right" or "wrong" and I appreciate that there are multiple options out there for researchers, depending on how one views his or her research.