Celebrating Blogiversary #4

This is blog post number 164 over the past four years. Although I have not blogged as much recently, I still enjoy writing about my husband's Jewish ancestry (in Eastern Europe and America), and often try to fit in a post that can be helpful to other researchers using these not as common or more challenging resources.

There were two big finds during this past year:

First, I believe I found the family of my mother-in-law's grandfather, Max Levitt, in Husiatyń, Galicia. See:

My Best Recent Genea-Prize
Levitas / Lewites from Austria
Mappy Monday - Husiatyń

Second, having a second cousin find my blog and contact me was great. When I learned that he made a video recording interview of his aunts (and my father-in-law's first cousins) and posted it on YouTube as Mishpacha Tapes Helen and Esther 1988, that was icing on the cake! See:

Connecting with a Handler Cousin: Blog as Cousin Bait for the first post about this connection. I have tagged all my blog posts mentioning this 1988 video with Mishpacha Tape. I plan to share more about this tape.

I also connected with a fourth cousin on the Segal line through DNA testing. See Connecting With a Segal Cousin to read about our meeting.

Thank you for reading my blog. I hope you continue to read and enjoy!

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday ~ Morris Goldstein's Scar

In my recent blog post where I shared the Certificate of Naturalization for my husband's grandfather, Morris Goldstein, the physical description of him includes the fact that he has a "scar on middle of forehead."

Originally shared August 2012

When I zoom in, I can see the scar on his forehead:

Morris Goldstein about 1950

The story is that, when he was a boy, in Romania, he was playing ball with a friend, and a bottle was thrown at him, which hit him in the head and cut him, leaving this scar.

Now that I know the story, and see the scar, I do see it in many of the photographs I have of him.

Certificate of Citizenship for Morris Goldstein

In April, when we visited my parents-in-law for Passover, my mother-in-law remembered that she had found something that she wanted me to have: her father's certificate of citizenship!

It turns out that this is a replacement for one that must have been "lost, mutilated, or destroyed."

Great-Grandparents Aaron and Sarah Handler

I have shared a few tidbits from the Mishpacha Tape Helen and Esther 1988 at YouTube since a cousin reached out to me last November:

Connecting With A Handler Cousin - Blog as Cousin Bait
Great-Grandmother Sarah or Sally Handler
Rose Handler - An Older Sister
Cousin and Athlete Art Handler
More Information on Bubbie Lena Handler

This is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Since I have been writing about my husband's great-grandmother, Sally Handler (see Handler Family-Another Generation Back), I thought I'd mention a bit more about what Aunt Helen and Aunt Esther had to say about her and her husband, Aaron Handler.

Esther and Helen

At just before 19 minutes into the Mishpacha Tape, Helen starts talking about her grandparents, Aaron Handler and Sarah Handler.

I already shared what they (mostly Helen) remembered about Aaron here.

After Helen describes what she remembers about the older half brothers of their mother, she is asked about Aaron's second wife, their grandmother. After some confusion about which grandma they're referring to (the cousin's or Helen's and Esther's), Helen responds to the question by stating: "He [Aaron] had a niece whose name was Sarah." [23:32] Sarah was the child of Aaron's brother, whose name Helen and Esther do not know. They also don't know anything about Sarah's mother.

The only siblings they know of in that generation are Aaron and Sarah's (unnamed) father. Sarah's father, an extremely devout Jew, felt that it was a mitzvah to provide a wife for his brother, who had lost his first wife, to ensure that his brother would have more children. Sarah had been "going with" a butcher's son at the time, but he wasn't religious enough in the eyes of her family, so she wasn't permitted to marry him.

So Sarah, 20 or 21 at the time according to Helen, married a much older man, her uncle Aaron. Click here to see the point in the film where Helen describes her mother, Regina (Handler) Solomon, remembering her father as an "old, old man, with a long white beard." Regina was four years old when her father, Aaron, died. I have two different sources for Regina's birth showing that she was born on February 20, in 1891 or 1892, placing Aaron's death in the mid-1890s.

Handler Family ~ Another Generation Back

I recently shared my "aha" moment about my father-in-law's Hebrew name being Tzvi Hersch (צבי הרש) which often becomes Harry in America.

My father-in-law's paternal grandmother was Sally Handler. (Also known as Roza, Rozalia, and Szali, as I shared at Different Names-Same Person.) I shared some information about her at Mystery Monday - Finding a Jewish Great-Grandmother, where I noted that JewishGen's Online Burial Registry (JOWBR) has an entry for Sally Handler:

She is Chaya Sara bat [daughter of] Zvi.

In Great-Grandmother Handler Married Twice, I shared a 1911 marriage record for Rosalie Hendler [sic] and Samuel Goodman where her parents are listed as Harry Hendler [sic] and Anna Stern.

I therefore theorize that this Handler line is:

Harry Handler = Anna Stern

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Sally Handler

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Josef Handler

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Harry Handler

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My husband

And the awkward thing about this line is that Sally Handler married her father's brother, Aaron Handler who was about 20 years her senior and a widower with children.