Tuesday's Tip ~ Spelling Doesn't Count

I recently visited a Family History Center in order to view some images from FamilySearch.org that are not available to me at home.

The images I viewed were from the New Jersey index to records of births, marriages, and deaths, 1848-1900. Some were for my family in northern New Jersey, and some were for my husband's family in Cape May County, in the southern part of the state. (See the image at right from Wikimedia Commons for the location of Cape May County.)

Two years ago, I shared an image of the ketubah (Jewish marriage contract) for my husband's great-grandparents, Max Levitt and Golda Segal. The Hebrew date translated to 26 October 1898.

Although these records are indexed at FamilySearch.org, I had not found the marriage record of Max and Golda in the index because their names were not what I expected. I had to browse the marriages year-by-year, looking for Cape May County, which, being sparsely populated at the time, made it not too painful.

Following is the page for the Index Register of Marriages in Cape May County, 1898-99:

Division of Archives and Record Management, New Jersey Department of State, Trenton. New Jersey index to records of births, marriages, and deaths, 1848-1900 (Salt Lake City, UT, USA, FamilySearch.org, 2017). Family History Library microfilm, #589818, Marriages Atlantic-Hudson v. 36 1898-1899, image 137 of 372. p. 124, line 59, Maik Levin-Lossie Siegel marriage, 26 October 1898.

The marriage of my husband's great-grandparents is the last one on this page, with a date of 26 October 1898.

Sixth Blogiversary

This is blog post number 215 in six years of blogging here at A Jewish Genealogy Journey.

I didn't blog as much as I wanted to during this past year, but I did share several Wordless Wednesday posts, as well as a few Tombstone Tuesday posts. And, of course, blog posts about DNA are always fun to share, though they take quite a bit of time to write!

I want to acknowledge that I will not be blogging much (if at all) during the next couple of months. I am two weeks into the fifteen-week Boston University Certificate in Genealogical Research program, which is taking up a lot of my time.

I look forward to taking what I am learning and applying it to my research and blogging. Thank you to my readers for staying with me; I do hope to return to regular blogging in the fall!

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Hersh Handler, d. 1863

In early 2016, Radovan Sremac, a researcher from Serbia contacted me through JewishGen's family finder and provided me with some images from the local archives showing the 1882 marriage record for Aron Handler and Szali Handler, my husband's great-grandparents, and the 1900 death record for Aron Handler.

He also let me know that there is a Jewish cemetery in Ilok, Croatia, and he shared several photographs of gravestones from that cemetery. Just about all of the text on the gravestones is in Hebrew, but with the assistance of resources like JewishGen's Reading Hebrew Tombstones, Steve Morse's Deciphering Hebrew Tombstone Dates and people on Facebook groups: Tracing the Tribe and Jewish Genealogy Portal, that isn't too much of a problem. I thank these kind volunteers for their translation assistance!

Tombstone Tuesday ~ Anna Gershman, d. 1909

Over two years ago, I connected with a DNA match of my husband's and we theorized that she and he were fourth cousins. See Connecting with a Segal Cousin.

A year before that, I shared a photograph of the gravestone of Simche Siegel (husband's 2x great grandfather) in Woodbine, New Jersey. See Tombstone Tuesday ~ Simche Seigal, 1919.

This fourth cousin recently obtained a photograph of her 2x great grandmother's gravestone in Har Nebo Cemetery, Philadelphia.

Hinde, daughter of Yehuda

Beloved Mother

Anna

Gershman

Apr 20, 1909

Age 60 Years

This is one more fact to help confirm that Anna / Hinde (Segal) Gershman is the sister of Simche Segal/Siegel - both gravestones list Yehuda as father.

Thank you Jill for sharing this photograph with me.

AncestryDNA Genetic Communities

I have already shared some information about AncestryDNA's newest feature: Genetic Communities at my other blog, From Maine to Kentucky.

Just for fun, I thought I would share my husband's Genetic Community. I'm sure you can guess what it is, based on the title and theme of this blog.

Yes, it's the Jews in Central Europe Genetic Community.