Tradition

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I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 18: Tradition

Introduction

The prompt for Week 18 is “Tradition.” Traditions can be an important part of family history, bringing context and connection between generations. What is an important tradition in your family, and who worked to keep that tradition going?

When I first thought about this prompt, I found myself thinking of the usual kinds of traditions: holiday meals, religious customs, family recipes, stories repeated from one generation to the next. Those are the traditions we usually recognize because they are visible. Someone lights the candles. Someone makes the dish. Someone tells the story again.

But sometimes a tradition is quieter than that.

Sometimes it is carved into stone.

For my Week 18 ancestor, Joseph Frank, the most meaningful tradition may be the Jewish memorial tradition preserved on his tombstone. It did not give me a full biography. It did not solve every mystery about his origins. But it gave me something deeply important: his Hebrew name, his father’s name, and a connection to a generation I might not otherwise have been able to name.

Joseph Frank in the Records

Joseph Frank was born in April 1852 in Russia. His exact birth date and the specific place within Russia have not yet been determined. Like many immigrant ancestors, he appears in American records with enough consistency to follow him, but not enough detail to answer every question.

Most identified records name him as Joe or Joseph. His marriage record calls him Joe. His declaration of intention, naturalization record, death certificate, and tombstone identify him as Joseph. One record complicates the picture: his daughter Anna’s marriage record identifies him as Pincus.

That variation is worth noting, though I do not yet know how to explain it. It may represent a recording error, a name used in another context, a misunderstanding, or something more personal within the family. For now, it remains one of those small mysteries that family historians learn to live with while continuing to gather evidence.

Joseph immigrated to the United States in December 1872 and settled in Manhattan, New York, where he remained for the rest of his life. He filed his declaration of intent on 14 April 1885 and completed naturalization on 26 October 1887.

On 17 January 1888, he married Jennie Feltler, at least as her surname was spelled in that record. Joseph worked as a tailor, and his marriage record gives the more specific description of buttonhole maker.

I love that detail. “Tailor” tells us his trade. “Buttonhole maker” brings us closer to the texture of his daily work. It suggests long hours, careful hands, repetition, skill, and a very particular place within the garment trades of New York.

Joseph died on 14 June 1916 and was buried in Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County, New York.

That could have been the end of what the records told me.

But his tombstone had more to say.

A Tradition Preserved in Stone

Joseph’s tombstone includes a Hebrew inscription. Simon Philip Jackson translated it as identifying him as:

Mr. Yosef son of Mr. Shmuel David

The inscription also gives the Hebrew date of death which, though that part of the stone was damaged from foliage, seems to correspond to his civil date of death, 14 June 1916.

That single line matters.

In English-language records, Joseph is usually Joseph or Joe Frank. Those records place him in the world of immigration, naturalization, work, marriage, and death in New York City. They are essential records, and I am grateful for them.

But the Hebrew inscription places him in another kind of record-keeping tradition. It remembers him not only by the name he used in American civil life, but by his Hebrew name and his father’s name:

Yosef, son of Shmuel David.

That is more than a translation. It is a connection.

The tradition of inscribing a Hebrew name and patronymic on a Jewish tombstone carried Joseph’s identity across time. It preserved his place in a family line. It named his father when other records I have found so far do not.

For a genealogist, that is incredibly valuable. For a descendant, it is also moving.

Because this tradition did not simply say, “Here lies Joseph Frank.” It said, in effect, “Here lies Yosef, son of Shmuel David. Remember him as part of a chain.”

What the Tombstone Gave Back

Joseph’s life still contains many unanswered questions. I do not yet know exactly where in Russia he was born. I do not know when or where his parents died. I do not know whether Shmuel David ever came to the United States, or whether Joseph left him behind when he immigrated.

The tombstone does not answer those questions.

But it gives me a name to carry forward.

Before the translation, Joseph’s father was not fully visible to me. After the translation, he had a name: Shmuel David. That does not prove every detail of his life, of course. It does not tell me his surname, occupation, residence, or story. But it gives me a starting point and, perhaps more importantly, it restores a relationship.

Joseph was someone’s son.

That may sound obvious, but genealogy has a way of turning people into isolated entries unless we are careful. Birth date. Marriage date. Occupation. Death date. Burial place. Those facts matter, but they are not the whole person.

The tombstone inscription pulls Joseph back into relationship. It reminds me that before he was an immigrant in Manhattan, before he was a tailor, before he was a husband and father, he was Yosef ben Shmuel David.

A son.

Who Kept the Tradition Going?

The prompt asks not only about the tradition, but about who worked to keep it going.

In Joseph’s case, the answer is layered.

His family likely kept it going first. Someone arranged for his burial. Someone made sure he was buried in Washington Cemetery. Someone chose, approved, or paid for a stone that included the Hebrew inscription. That act mattered. Whether they thought of it as “family history” or not, they preserved information that would matter more than a century later.

The Jewish community and burial tradition also helped keep it going. Joseph’s tombstone follows a practice larger than one family. It reflects a shared way of honoring the dead and remembering identity.

Then, much later, Simon Philip Jackson helped keep the tradition going by translating the inscription. Without that translation, the information was present, but not fully accessible to me. The words were carved there, but I needed help hearing what they said.

And now, in a small way, I am also helping keep the tradition going by recording it in Joseph’s story.

That is one of the quiet responsibilities of family history. We receive fragments: a record, a name, a photograph, a translation, a gravestone. Then we decide whether to let those fragments remain isolated, or whether to weave them back into memory.

A Different Kind of Family Tradition

This week’s prompt made me think differently about tradition.

Not every tradition is something handed down around a table. Not every tradition arrives as a story told by a grandparent. Some traditions are preserved in religious practice, in burial customs, in names, in dates, and in the choices families make when someone dies.

Joseph Frank’s tombstone did not preserve a recipe or a holiday custom. It preserved identity.

It told me that Joseph Frank was also Yosef.

It told me that his father was Shmuel David.

It gave me one more generation to hold onto.

And that, too, is tradition.

A tradition of remembrance.
A tradition of naming.
A tradition of keeping someone connected to those who came before him, even when the rest of the paper trail grows thin.

For Joseph Frank, the stone did more than mark a grave. It carried a family line forward.

And more than one hundred years later, it is still doing its work.

AI Disclosure

This post was created with the assistance of AI, which helped me organize the material, explore the theme of tradition, and draft language for review. The genealogical facts, interpretations, and final editorial choices are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Question the Records Can’t Answer

Working for a Living

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I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 17: Working for a Living

Introduction

My Week 17 ancestor is Fanny Steinberg.

Discussion

How do I write a “working for a living” post about Fanny Steinberg? Like her husband, I have no direct records of her. I have to assume, though, that she was a traditional Jewish wife in the 19th century in Central Europe. Because no direct records have yet surfaced, this post takes a different approach: a historically grounded reconstruction of the kind of work Fanny may have done, based on the world she most likely inhabited.

The Work of Fanny Steinberg Birnbaum

The following is informed speculation, grounded in the documented experience of Jewish women living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the late nineteenth century. No direct records of Fanny Steinberg Birnbaum have been located; what follows imagines her life through the lens of the world she most likely inhabited.

We do not know the name of Fanny’s village. It may have been a market town in what is today Slovakia — one of those places that changed its name with every shifting border, that was Magyar on Monday and German on Thursday, and quietly, stubbornly Jewish every day of the week. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was a patchwork of languages and loyalties, and somewhere in that patchwork, Fanny Steinberg was born, grew up, married a man named Bernat Birnbaum, and built a life.

Her work was the household. But to call it that — the household — is to make it sound modest when it was anything but.

The Kitchen and the Calendar

Everything in Fanny’s domestic world was organized around two intersecting structures: the rhythms of the Jewish calendar and the laws of kashrut. Together they meant that her “work” was never simply cooking or cleaning in any generic sense. It was the maintenance of a system, a living architecture of rules that required constant attention and real expertise.

A kosher kitchen in a modest Austro-Hungarian Jewish household meant, at minimum, two complete sets of dishes, pots, and utensils — one for meat, one for dairy — stored separately, washed separately, never confused. It meant knowing which foods could touch which, which combinations were forbidden, how long to wait between a meat meal and a dairy one. It meant that shopping at the market was not simply a matter of price and freshness but of sourcing: the butcher she used was Jewish, his slaughtering shechitah, the cut inspected and salted to draw out the blood according to law. If she bought eggs, she cracked them one by one into a separate bowl first, checking for blood spots. None of this was performed mechanically. It was a practice, inherited from her mother, who had learned it from hers.

And then there was Shabbat.

From Thursday evening, the preparations began. Bread had to be braided — the challah, two loaves for each of the two portions of manna the Israelites received on Fridays in the desert, a story told in bread every single week. The house had to be cleaned. The best tablecloth, probably worn at the edges by now, had to be laid. Candles had to be readied. The Shabbat stew — a cholent, perhaps, heavy with beans and barley and whatever cut of meat the week had allowed — was assembled on Friday and carried, if they lived in a town with a communal baker, to the baker’s oven to cook slowly overnight, since no fire could be lit on the Sabbath itself. If there was no communal baker, it cooked in whatever arrangement could keep it warm till the next day’s midday meal.

On Friday, as the sun moved toward the horizon, Fanny lit the candles. She covered her eyes with her hands and moved them in three slow circles over the flames before pressing them to her face, drawing the light in. She spoke the blessing. In that moment, whatever the week had held — the arguing with vendors, the mending, the mud, the worry about money, the longing, the ordinary grief of living — was set aside. Shabbat had arrived.

This was also her work.

The Market and the Money

In many Jewish communities of Central Europe, the division of labor between husband and wife did not map neatly onto the Victorian ideal of the man who earns and the woman who keeps house. Jewish tradition, paradoxically, valorized male Torah study — ideally, a man spent his days learning — which in practice meant that women were often the economic actors, running small shops or market stalls while their husbands prayed and studied. The woman of valor praised in Proverbs 31, which husbands chanted to their wives each Shabbat eve, was explicitly a businesswoman: She considers a field and buys it; from her earnings she plants a vineyard.

We do not know if Bernat worked, or what he did if he did. We know almost nothing about him at all — not even that he survived to see his grandson Bernard born in 1908. If he died young, Fanny may have been left to manage whatever small livelihood they had on her own, as many Jewish widows did, with a quiet, practiced tenacity.

What seems likely is that she was not a stranger to commerce. On market days — typically once or twice a week in a provincial town — she would have gone out among the farmers and the traders, selecting vegetables, haggling, calculating. She knew prices. She knew who cheated and who didn’t. She knew how to stretch a small amount of money into a week’s worth of meals.

The Community of Women

Fanny’s world was not isolated. Jewish communal life meant that women moved through a web of mutual obligation and shared knowledge. There was the mikveh, the ritual bath, which she would have visited each month — a private practice embedded in a communal institution, maintained by the community, visited by all the married women of the town. There were the women who helped at births, who sat with the dying, who prepared the body of a woman who had died for burial. There were the charitable societies — gemilut hasadim — that every Jewish community organized to care for the poor, the sick, the stranger passing through. Fanny almost certainly participated in these, because in a community that size, everyone did.

She would have known her neighbors’ business and they would have known hers, not as intrusion but as the texture of interdependence. When someone’s husband lost work, when a baby was born too soon, when a daughter’s engagement fell apart — these things rippled through a small Jewish community the way a stone ripples through water. Women were the carriers of this knowledge, and also of the help that followed it.

The Son Who Left

Around the turn of the century, in 1902, her son Samuel left. He went to America — to New York, where other young Jewish men from the same region were already arriving by the tens of thousands, fleeing the combination of poverty, legal restriction, military service, and the periodic threat of violence that shadowed Jewish life in Eastern and Central Europe in those years. The pogroms of the 1880s sent waves of emigrants westward. Samuel was among them.

What it cost Fanny to watch him go, we cannot say. She never followed him. Whether she couldn’t, or was too old, or chose not to — whether Bernat was still alive and could not travel, or was already gone and she was alone — we don’t know. What we know is that her son crossed an ocean and built a life she would never see.

His children — her grandchildren — grew up speaking English, in a country she never visited. One of them, Sidney, would one day be asked about his grandmother, and name her: Fannie Steinhart of Czechoslovakia. He got the surname slightly wrong, the way family names drift in the retelling, but the country he gave her — Czechoslovakia, a state that didn’t exist until 1918, years after she would have given Samuel her last embrace — places her, approximately, in that part of the world.

She stayed. The borders changed around her. The empire dissolved. New nations were declared. And Fanny, whoever she had become by then — an aging woman in a town that now had a different name than the one she’d been born into — kept her kitchen kosher, lit her candles on Friday evening, drew the light toward her face, and carried the work of her life forward in the only direction time allowed.

This portrait is constructed from the historical record of Jewish life in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its successor states, not from documents specific to Fanny Steinberg Birnbaum. Future research may yet surface records that confirm, complicate, or correct what is imagined here.

Thank you to Claude for this engaging reconstruction! If we know little about our ancestors, this helps us to feel more connected to them.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: Tradition

A Quiet Life, Redux

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I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 16: A Quiet Life, Redux

Introduction

My Week 16 ancestor is Bernat Birnbaum.

In error, I had done his grandson, Bernard Birnbaum, here. To make up for that, I am doing a brief redux post.

Since that Bernard post was later featured by Amy Johnson Crow, I’ve decided to let it stand, with this redux as the correction Bernat deserves. 😊

Discussion

It’s easy to write about Bernat’s quiet life, if I consider it An Unexamined Life. I have no direct records of Bernat (sigh, am I sensing a theme?). His son Samuel immigrated to the United States and left three records naming his father:

  1. On his marriage certificate, he named his father as Joe Bernbaum. A close up of a handwritten document Description automatically generated
  2. On his Social Security application, he named his father as Bernard Birnbaum.
  3. His death certificate (informant: his son) says his father was Bernat Birnbaum born Czec. I don’t believe Samuel’s son ever met Samuel’s father, so this information would be secondhand.

So at this moment, Bernard, or Bernat, or Joe, is unexamined. But if I have my way, he won’t remain so for long… “ChatGPT, draft me a research plan…”

Gemini suggests this research question:

Who were the parents of Samuel Birnbaum, born about 1885 in the region of present-day Slovakia or the Czech Republic, and what primary evidence identifies his father as the individual referred to as Bernat, Bernard, or Joe Birnbaum?

It suggested a three-phase research plan (along with specific record sources which I won’t replicate here):

Phase 1: Narrowing the Geography (U.S. Records)

Phase 2: Primary Evidence of Parentage (European Records)

Phase 3: Testing the Hypothesis That Bernat Died Before 1908

I have created a page in my Genealogy OneNote for this research plan and look forward to tackling this gap in knowledge.

Summary

Bernat Birnbaum’s life remains quiet not because it was uneventful, but because the records have not yet given him much of a voice. For now, he appears only through the documents of his son Samuel, under several possible names: Joe Bernbaum, Bernard Birnbaum, and Bernat Birnbaum. That uncertainty is frustrating, but also familiar in family history. A quiet life can still leave traces, and this redux is a reminder that even a mistaken turn can point the way toward the next research question. Bernat may be unexamined today, but he is no longer forgotten.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools, including ChatGPT and Gemini. AI helped me organize the research question and think through possible next steps, but the genealogical reasoning, storytelling, and conclusions are my own.

Ancestor #50

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 25, 2026

Prompt: “Who Is Ancestor #50 in your Ahnentafel list?  What were his birth date and place, his parents, death date and place, spouse’s name, marriage date and place, and how many children they had, and which of his children do you descend from?”

Introduction

I’ve been working since 2021 on an ancestry book based on my children’s ahnentafel. So those are the only ancestor numbers I talk about! That particular number is assigned to Andrew Driskol, on my side. My children descend from Andrew through his daughter Anna Driskol, who married Michael Joseph Anderson in 1906.

Discussion

Andrew would be my children’s 3x great grandfather. What an interesting choice! Andrew is such a mystery to me. Despite the fact that he lived well into the late 19th century, I have not yet found direct evidence of his existence. Everything I have is something that was reported by/around his children regarding their father.

I believe Andrew was born ca. 1835-1840. He apparently moved to England and married Malvina Hendell probably between 1860 and 1864. Based on children, he probably emigrated to the US about 1868-1869, followed by his wife and eldest children (ages 11 and 9) in 1875. (Malvina’s immigration is the first paper trail I have on any of them.)

They had children in New York City, then Staten Island, Richmond County, New York, until 1883.

I believe he died about 1890, since his eldest son purchased property then, suggesting assumption of family financial responsibility. By the 1900 census, Malvina was a widow and eldest son Edward was the head of household. Malvina died soon after.

Genealogical Summary

Andrew Driskol was born ca. 1835-1840 in Prussia. He married Malvina Hendell probably between 1860 and 1865, possibly in England. Andrew immigrated to the United States about 1868-1869, followed by his wife and eldest children about 1875. He died between 1883 and probably 1890. Documentation for Andrew’s life derives primarily from his children’s vital records, as direct records for him have not been located in standard repositories.

Children of Andrew Driskol and Malvina Hendell:

                                   i. Edward A DRISKOL was born in Feb 1865 in Germany. He arrived on the Holland in 1875. He lived on Van Pelt Ave in Staten Island between 1890 and 1900. In 1900 Edward was an Electrician. He moved to Queens between 1928/9 and 1938. He died after 1938. Note: I don’t believe Edward ever married – in one rather late land record, he was referred to as “single man.”

                                   ii. (perhaps) Edith DRISKOL was born about 1866 probably in England. Note: I believe she died young.

                              2  iii. Mary Malvina DRISKOL, born Mar 1873, New York City ; married Eugene HEMSTREET, 14 May 1891, Northfield, Staten Island; married Francis J VAN DUSKY, 14 Apr 1926, Manhattan; died 9 Mar 1938, Staten Island. Note: Interestingly, after Josephine died, and her sister Mary was widowed, Mary married Josephine’s widower. They had no children, but Mary did by her first husband: Grace, Edward, and Lillian.

                              3  iv. Josephine R DRISKOL, born 1878, Staten Island; married Francis J VAN DUSKY, 27 Dec 1899, Staten Island; died 4 Apr 1925, Staten Island. They also had three children: Edward, Mildred, and Dorothy.

                              4  v. Anna DRISKOL (my ancestor), born 10 Jul 1880, Staten Island; married Michael Joseph ANDERSON, 16 Aug 1906, Staten Island; died 19 May 1922, Staten Island. They had four children: Theresa, Mary, Frances, and Edward, my grandfather.

                                   vi. Joseph DRISKOL was born on 5 Jan 1883 in New York City. Joseph died on 27 Nov 1925 at the age of 42 in Staten Island. He never married.

Challenge

Andrew has always been a challenge to me. Every so often, I resolve to try again on him, and one day I will break through!

I blogged about Andrew in Disappeared and again in Overlooked.

Who is YOUR #50?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

The Letter That Made My Ancestor Real

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 18, 2026

Prompt: “Have you found an unexpected record recently (or at any time) in your genealogy and family history research?  A document, a book, an article, a letter, etc. This week, please tell us about that unexpected record find and how it helped your research.”

Introduction

My most unexpected record was a letter written by my ancestor 343 years ago!

Discussion

How often has “dumb luck” aided our research? Probably more often than we would like to admit. This was one of those moments.

I submitted a genealogical query and received a response that broke a brick wall wide open. Suddenly, three new generations appeared. When I searched for the oldest of them, I struck gold.

Louis Thibou and his family were French Huguenots who fled France as religious tensions escalated. They went first to London, then sailed to Carolina, where they settled near Charleston in 1680.

Three years later, Louis wrote a letter to his friend Gabriel Boutefoy in London, encouraging him and his friends to come as well. Somehow, that letter has survived. I was blessed to hold it in my own hands at the South Caroliniana Library.

The letter reads almost like a promotional piece for Carolina, but it also contains priceless family detail: “God has given us a son who is called Jacob after the one we lost in England; the captain of a warship was his godfather. Gabriel is well and kisses the hands of his godfather and godmother.” Young Gabriel was my ancestor. I can’t begin to express the awe I felt holding that letter in my hands. Louis thought he was reaching across an ocean but he was also reaching across centuries.

That is what astonishes me most: after all the careful, methodical work that went into finding this line, I was suddenly able to hear my ancestor’s voice across more than three centuries. Research takes discipline, yes, but sometimes it also feels like grace.

Figure 1: Me with the letter written (in French) by my 9th great grandfather.

References

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

A Quiet Life

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I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 16: A Quiet Life

Introduction

My Week 16 ancestor is Bernard Birnbaum.

Bernie was born in Manhattan and spent the early part of his life in Manhattan and the Bronx. By the time his family was well underway, his oldest child was ten and he was establishing his law practice. I have photographs of the family at the large Bronx apartment complex where they lived, a place that must have felt very much a part of city life. Busy streets, close quarters, constant motion — that was the world Bernie knew.

Figure 1 My husband at their Bronx apartment complex

Discussion

And yet, at some point, Bernie and his family made a different kind of choice.

They moved to Rockville Centre on Long Island. At the time, that move would have represented a real shift in daily life. The Long Island Rail Road and the Sunrise Highway were making it increasingly possible to live outside the city while continuing to work in Manhattan. For an attorney with a city practice, suburbia had become a plausible option.

Their children went to school there and, from that home, began building lives of their own. Rockville Centre offered something Manhattan and the Bronx could not: a quieter rhythm. More space. Tree-lined streets. A sense of retreat at the end of the day.

I find myself wondering what that felt like for Bernie.

What was it like to leave behind the noise of Manhattan each evening and return to a calmer neighborhood where his wife and children were waiting? Did the train ride home become a kind of boundary between his professional life and his family life? Did that quieter setting feel like a reward for years of work, or simply like the right place to raise a family?

Not every ancestor leaves behind dramatic stories. Some leave evidence of steadiness instead — the kind of choices that suggest responsibility, care, and the desire to build a good life for the people around them. Moving his family to Rockville Centre feels like that kind of choice to me. It may not have been adventurous, but it was meaningful.

Sometimes a quiet life is not empty of story. Sometimes it is the story.

Figure 2 A modern day Google photograph of the home Bernie and his wife raised their family in.

Summary

After retirement, when the children had left the nest, Bernie and his wife moved back to Manhattan. That detail feels especially telling. Perhaps the city had always remained part of who they were, even after the quieter years on Long Island.

I suppose Bernie was always of two worlds: the energy of the city and the peace of the suburbs.

His life may not read like an adventure tale, but it offers something just as valuable — a glimpse of how ordinary decisions shape a family’s history. In that sense, Bernie’s quiet life was not small at all.

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: Working for a Living

A Marriage Date Hidden Between the Children

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I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 11, 2026

Prompt: “Do you have an ancestor with no defined birth and death dates or places? This week, please tell us about that ancestor and what clues you used to estimate a birth and death dates and places.”

Introduction

I hope you don’t mind if I interpret this week’s prompt a little loosely and apply it to a marriage date rather than a birth or death date.

While tracking my ancestor Jason Smith, it became clear that he had two wives. I first suspected that because a relative posted a tree online saying she was descended from his first wife. That left me trying to figure out when Jason married my ancestor Mary Denny, who then became the elusive Mary Smith. Sigh.

My Response to the Prompt

Because the children were born in the 1830s and 1840s, there was not much documentation in their records to clearly identify their mothers.

So I started with the children and looked for patterns in the sequence, especially any gap that might suggest a death and remarriage. Here is the lineup I was working from:

Adelia Smith, b. ?
William Mulford Smith, b. 14 May 1835
Deborah Ann Smith, b. 31 Dec 1837
Jason A. Smith, b. 20 Mar 1839
Mary Catharine Smith, b. 30 Oct 1841
George Henry Smith, b. 1 Oct 1843
Charles Edward Smith, b. 12 Jul 1845
Oscar F. Smith, b. ca. 1846
Alice Matilda Smith, b. 16 Feb 1850
Sarah H. Smith, b. Jan 1852
Lewis N. Smith, b. Aug 1859

Looking at that list, I suspected the wife change happened somewhere in the middle, but I did not think it was as late as Alice’s birth in 1850.

Then, finally, a newspaper notice turned up online.

I found an item in the Baptist Advocate dated November 14, 1840, and that gave me a much firmer point on the timeline.

That newspaper notice, announcing the November 4, 1840 marriage of Mr. Jason M. Smith and Miss Mary Denny, helped clarify when Jason’s household changed. So, my working theory based on the children’s birth dates turned into something much stronger once I had contemporary evidence to support it.

This guy did not waste any time finding a mama for his littles.

It was a good reminder that when exact dates are missing, we often build a timeline first from the children, the census, and whatever indirect clues we can gather, and then wait for one good record to bring the picture into focus.

How do you estimate unknown dates?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Hot Tip: I just got a NYC marriage license online!

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Those of us who research NYC know that the city has been putting birth certificates, marriage certificates, and death certificates online.

What I did not realize is that marriage licenses are online too.

I knew my father-in-law and his first wife had marriage certificate #9090 in a certain year and borough. When I searched the city site by certificate number, it pulled up their certificate, but it also showed a marriage license for a different couple with the same number.

So I went to Ancestry’s New York City Marriage License Indexes, found my father-in-law’s actual marriage license number — 9016 — and searched that number back on the city website.

There it was: their marriage license.

Made my Saturday night!

And yes, if I had kept up with the city’s digitization updates, I would have known this. 🙂

Unexpected

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Unexpected

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge.
Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 15: Unexpected

Introduction

My Week 15 ancestor is Edith Makey West. When I thought about the theme “Unexpected,” I realized that her life was shaped by unexpected mothering in many forms: first when her aunt stepped in after her mother’s death, then when a stepmother took on that role, and later when Grandma herself helped raise my generation.

Discussion

We say, “It takes a village to raise a child,” but it really did in many ways. Grandma’s mother died when she and her siblings were young children, and her mother’s married, childless sister, Aunt Edith, stepped in to help raise the three of them. Grandma remained very fond of Aunt Edith and Uncle Peter for the rest of her life. Aunt Edith died relatively young, but my uncle remembered Uncle Peter, so clearly the families remained close.

Once Grandma’s father remarried, he and his new wife brought the children back and informed them, “This is your mother now.” Grandma did, in fact, treat the woman as a mother, including caring for her after Grandma’s dad passed away. When Grandma told me family stories, she would mention, “My mother” and I would clarify that she meant her stepmother. (Not to be mean, of course, but I wanted to attribute the family stories to the right person.)

Finally, after my mother left my father and took us with her, she went home to her parents. Grandma helped raise us while my mother secured her footing, returned to the workforce, gained financial stability, and generally settled into single parenting. I never, ever heard Grandma issue the slightest complaint about all this new responsibility for a retired couple.

Summary

Grandma once told me, while recounting the family history, that the men in her family had it tough. I told her I thought the women did too; they were simply expected to endure, adapt, and keep going.

What feels most unexpected to me is not a hidden record or a family story proven true, but the way mothering kept taking new forms in Grandma’s life. After losing her own mother, she was cared for by Aunt Edith. Later, a stepmother took on that role in the household. And when her own daughter needed help, Grandma stepped in to help raise the next generation. In the end, the unexpected discovery is that in our family, mothering was not always about who had the title, but about who showed up.

Walter, Harry, and Edith Makey

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Quiet Life

From Ohio to New York: A Family Turning Point

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From Ohio to New York: A Family Turning Point

I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: April 4, 2026

Prompt: “Family stories are often about “Turning Points” and “Major Decisions.” This week, please describe a “Turning Point” in the life of one of your parents (or for both of them, or for grandparents).  Describe the decision, and discuss the outcome of it.”

Introduction

My grandfather’s decision to move to New York City during the Great Depression is one of the most courageous choices I’ve seen in my family history. If he hadn’t made that leap, my grandparents might never have met.

Discussion

Gordon West was born and raised in Liberty Center, Henry County, Ohio, a very small town. He was a talented musician and played the organ in a movie theater until the arrival of “talkies” put him out of work.

During the Depression, Grandpa went to work for a friend who ran a printing press – he worked without pay to learn the trade. After trying unsuccessfully to find work in Detroit, about 100 miles away, he made an even bolder choice: he went to New York City. As far as I know, he had no friends or contacts there, yet he found work as a linotype operator at the Staten Island Advance. For housing, he rented a room at a woman’s boarding house, and she thought he might be a nice young man for her niece’s stepdaughter – my Grandma.

They married in 1935 and he worked for the Staten Island Advance until he retired in 1972 after 41 years’ service.

The Great Depression was a terrible thing, but it did bring my grandparents together.

Staten Island (N. Y.) Advance, August 23, 1972, page 25

Challenge

Small changes can make a big difference. What butterfly effect have you seen or experienced?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.