PERSI - THE PERIODICAL SOURCE INDEX : IT'S FREE and EXISTS BECAUSE OF THE DEDICATED WORK OF GENEALOGY LIBRARIANS AT ALLEN COUNTY INDIANA LIBRARY

ACPL RESOURCE 

This is a massive database from the Allen County Indiana Public Library. The search feature will bring up SUBJECT INDEX that lead you to Periodicals from Genealogy Societies! You want to search for a topic, which can be the name of a state, town, surname. It will bring up the NAME OF THE ARTICLE, the DATE PUBLISHED, and THE PUBLISHER which could be a Genealogy or Historical Society. Searching through these MAY ALSO LEAD YOU TO THE NAMES AND ADDRESSES OF GENEALOGY AND HISTORICAL SOCIETIES YOU NEVER KNEW EXISTED.

Excerpt: PERSI is the premier subject index for genealogy and local history periodicals, and is produced by the staff of The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library. This valuable resource provides more than 3.2 million citations to readily-available periodical sources. 

After finding what interests you, you can order a copy of the publication.  YOU CANNOT READ THE PUBLICATION FOR FREE HERE but YOU MIGHT BE ABLE TO FIND IT ELSWHERE DIGITALIZED NOW THAT YOU HAVE THE TITLE. That said, the fee for them to copy it and send it to you is reasonable. It's $7.50 for them to locate up to six articles and copy fees are per page and paid later.

Let's try it. Click on United States. Then select Florida. Then Bay County.

Listed are publications by Bay County Genealogical Society, Florida Historical Quarterly, Pensacola Historical Society, Museum of Southern Jewish Experience, Florida State Genealogical Society, West Florida Genealogical Society, Tallahassee Genealogical Society, and some others. 

More on this library's offerings in the next post.

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COMMITTEE FOR YIDDISH A GALLERY OF MISSING HUSBANDS : "A Gallery of Missing Husbands," with Michael Morgenstern

Committee for Yiddish YouTube Channel : A Gallery of Missing Husbands 

On this video Jewish Community newspapers from the Great Immigration period of American history hold ads in which abandoned wives seek their husbands. Men overwhelmed with the realities of recent immigrant life sometimes disappeared out of shame or because they could not live up to the responsibilities of marriage and children.  Wives desperate for reunion sought them publicly in ads.  Sometimes this effort would later be used to prove they had tried when divorce - and remarriage - was the only answer.

Again, Committee for Yiddish is an excellent YouTube channel and if you go to the link you'll find lots else that is educational.

COMMITTEE FOR YIDDISH - AN EXCELLENT YOUTUBE CHANNEL : How Ashkenazic Jews Got Their Names and the Troubles They Have Caused Them, with Kalman Weiser

 Committee is an excellent channel for learning about the Yiddish language and culture.

Loved this video... 

JEWISH ASHKENAZIM GENEALOGY : NAME CHANGES and OTHER UNIQUE CHALLENGES

Jews have come to America since Colonial Times but in general most of those from Europe came during the Industrial Revolution from Central and Eastern Europe, that Great Immigration period from about 1880 - 1920.  So for American Jews, the genealogy research starts with American records as it would for any other American.

Because of intermarriage between Jews and Christians there are Americans today who might not identify as Jewish or who acknowledge a Jewish ancestor - with many rumors of Jewishness as well - who do Holocaust Genealogy.

There are some special considerations in Jewish genealogy that make it a bit more difficult and that is dealing with Hebrew alphabet and translation, Yiddish language,  naming conventions, and informal name changes.

I've stated it elsewhere on this blog but that officials at Ellis Island changed the names of immigrants coming through is a myth. They had no authority to do that and were also dealing with hundreds of incoming every time a steamship came into the port in New York. It's likely that sometimes an immigrant's name was written down phonetically but that's not the same as an authority changing a person's name.

However Jewish immigrants DID sometimes change their names, sometimes to a German version from a Polish or Russian one - since German Jews had an easier time of assimilation, sometimes to an English or American name, sometimes to make the name easier to spell or pronounce. These name changes were rarely done formally and legally.  In many cases people were known by their Hebrew or Polish or other ethnic surname as well as their new name.

My suggestion is to do the usual genealogy research and perhaps on a marriage or a draft registration or other document the name change will be revealed.  Find the marriage record kept at the temple, not just the civil one. Have tombstones translated and get the cemetery record as well as the death record. Remember that if something comes right up on a database that's a blessing but books, microfilms, newspapers, and writing to archives may still be necessary. 

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UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM : JEWISH PEOPLE - ROMANI (GYPSY) - JEHOVAH WITNESSES

Excerpt from Genocide of European Romani  page:  Roman were anong the groups that the Nazi regine (1933-1945) and its partner regimes singled our for persecution and murder before and during World War II. Roman are pejoratively referred to as Zigeuner in German and as Gypsies" in English.

(Just a note here. I'm not so sure the word gypsy is a pejorative, rather a misnomer, however people do understand when you use the word gypsy and less so when you use the word Roma or Romani.  In my genealogy research I've found there are slang terms for these people in other languages and slang terms for many an ethnic group.)   Drawing support from many non-Nazi Germans who harbored social prejudice towards Roman, the Nazis judged Roma to be "racially inferior."  Under the Nazi regime, German authorities subjected Roman to arbitrary internment, sterilization, forced labor in concentration camps, denotation, and mass murder.  German authorities murdered tens of thousands of Roman in the German occupied territories of the Soviet Union and Serbia and thousands more in the killing centers....

UNITED STATES MEMORIAL HOLOCAUST MUSEUM - START PAGE

USHMM - JEHOVAH WITNESSES - HOLOCAUST

YAD VASHEM - SEARCHABLE DATABASES and ONGOING DESIRE FOR MORE INFORMATION : THE RIGHTEOUS AMONG NATIONS

YAD VASHAM ; THE WORLD HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE CENTER

Search by town, by person's name, or if you have it, where they died.  But also a database of the Righteous Among Nations, testimonials, history - so very much.  An excellent site to explore. 

People who provide testimonials often also provide a photo of the person they have added to the database and so there is always that possibility that you'll discover a photo.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HOLOCAUST - FREE and PAY DATABASES IN EUROPE

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - HOLOCAUST STUDIES 

The following is just ONE of the portholes from this web page. 'The Archives Portal Europe is one of the milestones achieved by the participants of the APEnet Project supported by the European Commission in the eContentplus Programme. The project's consortium currently consists of twelve national archives/national archive administrations and five members.

Archivos Estatales (Spain)

Archiwa Państwowe (Poland)

Arhiv Republike Slovenije (Slovenia)

Bundesarchiv (Germany)

Γενικά αρχεία του κράτους (Greece)

Direcção-Geral de Arquivos (Portugal)

Direction des Archives de France

Kansallisarkisto (Finland)

Latvijas Arhīvi (Latvia)

Nationaal Archief (The Netherlands)

National Archives of Malta

Riksarkivet (Sweden)

National Archives of Ireland

National Archives of Belgium

Държавна Агенция Арxиви (Bulgaria)

Department of Archives Administration and Records Management of the Ministry of the Interior of the Czech Republic

Rahvusarhiiv (Estonia)

HOLOCAUST GENEALOGY - JEWS, JEHOVAH WITNESSES, ROMA, and CATHOLICS and CHRISTIANS TOO - ELEVEN MILLION

The Six Million.  You've heard this term.  I wonder if you know that it applies to the estimated Jewish victims of genocide by the Nazi's prior to and during World War II?  The number is an estimate and based on reportage, concentration camp documents, and the like.  However, another Five Million non-Jewish others were also murdered during the Nazi occupation.  Though the years have gone by, though most of the holocaust survivors are now deceased, though there are holocaust deniers, to this day there are museums and memorials and foundations interested in collecting testimonials.  They were the disabled, children who had African genetics, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses.

This month in which the Holocaust Memorial Day is lodged, I'll be focusing on research and education opportunities about the Holocaust that began in 1939 and continued until the allies which included the United States defeated the Nazi's in Europe.

I recently met a man whose grandfather and uncle died being worked to death because they were Jehovah Witnesses. He had recently gone to Europe and toured the camps in Germany as well as Poland.  As a result of doing some research for him, I decided to go forward with the plan to jam this month with information.

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS : ITALIAN? SPANISH? PORTUGUESE? DNA? CUBA? KNIGHTS TEMPLER?

Is Christopher Columbus Who We Think He is? / Secrets and Lies of Columbus / Timeline

October 9th is the traditional Columbus Day holiday... And this documentary about the search for the man credited with "discovering America" after sailing across the Atlantic in 1492, is fascinating. Several highly intelligent people -including his descendants and that of Vasco De Gama, are devoting their research and expertise to discovering the historical truth about the man, who died not revealing his origins. Chances are he was born in Cuba Portugal to a woman who was a mistress to a member of the Royal Family, and it's possible she was Jewish. What of the stories you may have heard that Columbus was actually the surname Colon?  In this documentary we learn that even the name Christopher Columbus was one the mystery man took rather than be identified as a royal bastard. As for his humble origins, boys and men from humble origins generally did not get to sail such ships.

You'll love the archival documents and the visits to royal tombs.

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES #2 THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES : JEWISH

HOW TO DEAL WITH SURNAME MYSTERIES  #2  THE RATHER RECENT NOTION OF SURNAMES  : JEWISH

In the history of humans, the need for surnames is rather recent. 

We live in a world where just about everyone has two given names and a surname that, if a person desires a change, must be changed legally, which can be expensive. This formality and recent exactitude is one of the reasons we think that spelling the name as we know it to be when using a database, is the only thing to do. In genealogy though, in searching for those documents that proof our research work, we have to see it to believe it and here is a lot of missing information or inaccuracies to deal with. We have to make a judgement call sometimes on to accept or reject what we found and know why we did so in order to explain that process in our publication.

The use of surnames rose up with population increases, and the ability for people and governments to keep documents and often the decision a government made to start with demands for legal surnames has much to do with - you guessed it - statistics meant to be used to plea for funding or taxation.  

Handwritten records came first, of course. Sometimes only the educated - the priests and nuns - the nobles and aristocrats - went to school to learn to read and write. For some time the highest ranking people did not learn to read and write but considered this the role of scribes or servants. Then came the printing press, then the typewriter, then the word processor, and now here we are with computer.

***

By the way, those questions of the census' 'Do you read and write?' don't mean that the person was fluent or actually read much. Being able to sign your name might be enough to indicate that the answer should be yes. Remember that census may be the backbone of American genealogy but there can be misinformation on it. To this day no one is hooking you up to a lie detector or asking you to put your hand on the Bible when you answer the enumerator's questions. (And your landlord or neighbor may be the one reporting and not know what they are talking about!)

Unlike today in the United States, when we have education that is provided free and the majority stay in school through twelve years of education, back in the day it wasn't at all uncommon for children, especially children in agricultural regions where they actually worked from a very young age, to not go to school at all. Even a third-grade education was sometimes considered enough. The child would learn the basics of reading and arithmetic (math) and it was up to them to pursue advancing their knowledge in these basics by using what was taught. We had child labor, even in the coal mines. Even in the 20th century, some people made it through the eighth grade and then went to work, into service,  Becoming a live in nanny or a maid was considered good training for a girl who would become a wife and mother. Others quit high school to go to work and help support the family. 

Another aspect of education that is culturally significant for many of us is that there was a system of apprenticeships and trade guilds in place. A boy, usually not a girl though there were exceptions, would be taken underwing by other men, often his father or an uncle, to teach him the trade and a way to support himself and his future family. Now people who want to learn a trade go to a school and hope they can do an internship and then get paid employment for someone they are probably not related to. Factories took over so much production that was hands-on, such as leather work and the making of shoes, that there are not so many tradesmen left and the guilds have been replaced at best with Unionization. 

***

Surnames evolved and may not be consistant.

EXAMPLE

In Eastern Europe, Jewish people lived in their own religious culture, mixing with people of other ethnic people in the market, in commerce, and in other ways - certainly there were friendships - but generally returning to their own when it came to personal life and choices - such as in marriage and the practice of their religion. Within their culture, everyone who mattered was known to them, and the tradition was to identify a child by also mentioning the first name of their father or even simply using a nickname. So, your friend Izzy, formally Isaack, whose father was Yosef, back in the village in Poland, might go with the name Yosefowicz but in the United States go by Josephson...

It is common for us also to assume that 'Jewish" names are identifiable as German or German Jewish, but Jewish surnames were adapted by the country the person was living in, the dominant culture at the time. As an example, when some Jewish people left Southern Poland and went into Hungary, they Hungarian-ified their surnames. (And a note here that Sephardic Jews had surnames that are Spanish or Portuguese in origin.)

Sometimes taking on a surname had little to do with taking one of your own choice at all.  Surnames were sold and paid for in some places - and there might not be an extended family agreement on the name. If you had the money, you might end up with generations of your family being able to use the surname Diamond, Sapphire, or Ruby, or if you were a tradesperson (i.e. what we call Blue Collar now) you might go with a surname that reflected your profession - some form of Carpenter or Weaver or Baker, but if you were poor, if  you had no money, some person - an official  maybe a snob - might give you one of the free surnames that reflected your poverty and lowly position in life.  What a good reason to change your name upon coming to America!

Now that we know that we not only have to check the spelling for meaning, but also check the language for meaning, we might also realize that some people changed their names when they came to America for a new start. (The often repeated "changed at Ellis Island" is a myth both the official web site and I deny. I believe that individuals simply changed their own names for a variety of reasons, including ease, to put an end to the discrimination they had experienced in the Old Country, or to blend into the new culture.

Some people decided they just were not that into being Jewish anymore. I've met several researchers who found out someone in their heritage was Jewish along the way and without a DNA test which was surprising to them. Back in the day to be Jewish was to be Orthodox or Hassidic, not Reform, and sometimes a person just didn't feel so religious.

If you are doing Jewish research, you will also want to work with the Hebrew names granted children at birth, which are not the same as the public name the person used. If unable to read it yourself, you may need someone fluent in Hebrew to decode certain records and old tombstones with Hebrew letters on them often give up lots of good information. ***

This post is one of a series on the subject.  Click on the tag Surname Help - AWG to get to the posts.

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All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

image from Graphics Fairy

*** A note here on my fairly recent Opinion piece about tombstone projects and allowing the dead and the alive relatives of dead people to rest in peace rather than have their information revealed on the Internet or in Databases.

JEWISH MUSEUM in ISRAEL HAS DATABASES

JEWISH MUSEUM DATABASES  in Hebrew and English

Many family trees stored, lots of photos, search by PLACE to learn more about it and see what genealogy information is associated with people who lived there.  A list of surnames all the way back to Egypt. ANU Jewish Museum... 

LIBERTY GREETS JEWISH IMMIGRANTS

 

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

Today there will be memorials for the innocent people who were killed in a genocide against European Jews called The Holocaust. I'm not a Holocaust denier. I respect and use various web sites including Yad Vashem. However when we hear The Six Million, we should be aware that this is a count of Jewish victims. Many people who were not Jewish were also killed including Catholic priests, people who sympathized or helped Jews hide or escape, intelligencia... The demonic plan was to eventually also kill off people who were of the Slavic "races."

What does this mean for genealogists? I'll be writing more on this subject later in the year.

Today let's think about genocide and how that has changed populations around the world.

Let's think about how vaccines, sanitation, and nutrition help humans live longer and better lives.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AMSTERDAM - NOT JUST FOR "DUTCH" : JEWISH GENEALOGY post #2

Last month I posted about the National Archives of Amsterdam and said I would post more as I myself learned more about this site.  I mentioned that there are resources for those who are not "Dutch" including Jews - Dutch Sephardic Jews and Jews of the Holocaust including people who escaped to Holland may be represented.  Like many other databases that are offered by Country or Ethnic Group (Ukrainian, Irish, etc.) the data will continue to be loaded on and so checking back every so often is a good idea. There may also be spotty information due to the temporary or permanent loss of records. Still, we can be grateful for what is given as there is usually no charge, Google translate can help English-speakers quite a bit, and a person no longer has to afford to travel to go to an archive.

Today I want to mention some items within this on-line archives which are interesting!

POPULATION REGISTERS start at 1851 and are spotty. (civil)
BIRTH REGISTERS - both religious (baptismals) and others that are not (civil). These include Mennonites and Portuguese (Sephardic) Jews.
THERE MAY BE PHOTOS OF THE FAMILY included.

House numbers are NOT the same as today.

MARKET PERMITS or "Cards" say what it is your merchant ancestor was selling.  There are also PHOTOS included in this collection.  I suggest that if the market permit coincides with the history of the Holocaust you do some cross-checking with records elsewhere.

"UNDERLYING REGISTERS" important and searchable.

These include marriage bonds, contracts put out to the public (so if anyone objects, because they know someone is already married for instance, which is still done in some churches in their bulletins.) This ends in 1811 when Napoleon changed the laws.  Witnesses will be listed, as will it say if a person is divorced and to whom the bride or groom this time around was married to before! That is so valuable and unexpected.

A little more on this archive next month!

NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AMSTERDAM


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I'M FOR the CITIZENSHIP QUESTION on U.S. CENSUS and AGAINST REPARATIONS - HEAR ME OUT

A friend I talked to said a Japanese friend of hers, whose parents were relocated during World War II and lost everything, refuses to cooperate with the U.S. Census because he says our government used it to locate Japanese-Americans or Japanese aliens to do this. I'm not sure officials did use the census to locate Japanese people or Japanese-Americans for the purpose of relocation. I realize this was a terrible experience for those effected by it - whole communities.

I know that here and now, if there were any group to be targeted for any purpose whatsoever, there would be ways to find those in the group. The fact is, there are other ways to locate people these days besides a census, many more ways. 

I suspect that back in the day authorities knew where ethnic groups were ghettoized or where they preferred to live, among others who spoke the same language and had the same cultural expectations.  My own ancestors lived in these ethnic ghettos as immigrants.

Our multiculturalism and mixing no longer guarantees that a given name or a surname identifies the person on a census as one ethnicity or another. Therefore I wonder about the validity of "identity politics."  Are we not creatures of personality and character and soul and not just what we appear on the surface to be?  Our own self-identity is what matters to us now. Besides thinking or feeling yourself to be a certain race or ethnicity though the facts (such as a DNA test or genealogy research) may indicate that you are a mix, that self identity also includes our gender and sexual orientation. The fact is that census takers used observation to determine that someone was male or female, W, M, or C, back in the day.  (And I've seen the person considered C or M in the South to be considered W in the North on census.)

I had a client who immediately assumed because some names of his ancestors were German that they were Jewish. He was wrong. I asked my friend who is upset about the Japanese internment, well what if they used the census to identify and locate Jews for round up? She gulped.

What is the purpose of a census?  It's statistical. It is used to determine what's what - what's needed - and to ask for money from the government (as well as common citizens through taxation or donations) for various purposes and to make policy.

Certainly no census has ever been done for the purposes of future genealogy buffs. 

An example that many Americans can understand is homeless counts, which are usually under counts since many homeless people do not cooperate or cannot be found to be counted.  Agencies and the government look to this count to ask for and get funding appropriate to their location. They don't get enough money to deal with all the people who come through their doors asking for help because maybe a third of those who are actually homeless were counted.

We can't know if we will be for or against any particular change that might be based on census, but we certainly would like to know how many citizens there are so we can also know how many are voting.  We'd like to know how many children live in a district to plan for their education.  And I think we'd like to know how many people are living in the U.S. who want to be citizens.

Several years ago I met a school teacher who showed up to teach in the fall and had an almost empty classroom.  Due to housing costs many students had left that school and their parents seemed to not have re-enrolled them elsewhere as there had been no requests to have grades or other documents transferred to another district. (It was assumed that these families had become homeless and not enrolled their children in any school.)

And there is a precedent as any genealogist who uses the past U.S. Census knows of asking these questions: Are you an alien? In process of citizenship? What year did you become a citizen? (And we genealogists depend on these documents to find out where people came from so we can cross the ocean with our research.)

I once wondered if my own ancestors hid out, afraid to answer the door because of the conditions they lived in prior to America, but I did find them - their surname horribly misspelled - on one of those pages that is faded and damaged.

There is also a historical precedent for blocking or not allowing the citizenship process to go forwards which prevented those of a certain ethnicity - including mine - to be considered a potential threat to the security of the United States because of World War I. Thus some immigrants who wanted citizenship years earlier had to wait until after that war.

As for reparations, I cannot even imagine how we would decide who deserves "reparations" for slavery prior to the Emancipation decades ago other than using DNA tests and coming up with some mathematical formula for how many dollars for what percentage of slave-identified genetics. And what of so many of us who never owned slaves and come from families that never owned slaves?  Why would we pay, assume we are "guilty" of enslaving for our skin color, and owe others based on their racial identity because of our racial identity?  That's not fair.  I'm not responsible for what anyone in my family history (and mine came here after the abolishment of slavery) did in the past.  I'm not responsible for the actions of people I never met and wasn't raised by. I'm only responsible as an adult for my own actions in this life. 

As they say, you can't choose your family, you can only choose your friends. I don't want to punish others for their ancestry any more than I want to punish some upstanding citizen who happens to have a criminal in the family. What about those people who have slave heritage but generations later have moved beyond it or those who have African heritage but were never slaves? 

Should those of Catholic heritage ask for reparations from WASPS because they were horribly exploited by the Robber Barons as immigrants (pre-union) who worked six days a week, back to back "shifts" of 14-16 hours, for example?  

When does prejudice end?  

It ends with our personal behavior in this life.

One person mentioned to me the reparations for Jews who's families were killed in the Holocaust or had property seized.  While I don't know exactly how that worked in Germany - or Israel - there are some differences.

The first is that living people were able to PROVE what they lost, mostly because it was fairly recent history, so names, photographs, addresses, titles to property and so on could be used. Secondly, Jewish-Americans have told me that they did not ALL get the money. Rather one person in their family proved what they had lost, did the applications and got whatever was offered.  So they would say to me, "I didn't apply because so and so already got the money." And it was generally not much.  Generally it was a token - a token apology of sorts.

It's not that I don't have a heart.  I'd rather see the money spent on education and other programs to help those who need help here and now, no matter what their heritage.

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This post was edited for clarity on September 3, 2019

JUDAISM as MATRIARCHAL CULTURE : JEWISH GENEALOGY

Walking the dog, I got into a conversation with a new neighbor who happens to be an obstetrician and Jewish.  Still delivering babies though well past the usual retirement age, the joke goes that he's seen half the town naked - because he delivered them. Must say, he is up on genetic testing as well as invitro. He mentioned that he delivered a woman's grandchild, she being the surrogate for her daughter. He also told me - and I had not heard this before - WHY Jewish culture is matriarchal.  Simply, "The men were taken away as slaves and the women had to carry on."

Jewish genealogy is extremely popular and there are many cooperative projects.  Some of this, I feel, is part of the urge towards Americans finding their roots after forgetting about them for a couple generations, some of it is surely because of the devastating effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people. DNA is adding an interesting aspect to genealogical research because some people are using it to try to confirm Jewish ancestry just as some are using it to try and confirm Native American ancestry.

My experience is that while some European Jewish records are superior to Christian records, because they give interesting information not found in most Baptismal records, overall there are special challenges.  For instance the name of the midwife and/or the name of the Rabbi who did a circumcision, which may indicate the congregation or temple a family belonged to, is listed.  This seems to be about a concern that the baby be handled in a kosher way and a certainty of Jewishness.

I once had a student who started the class with a negative attitude, that because her family had all "perished" she could not do genealogy. This is simply not true.  Genealogy like history is so niche specific. At the time I was teaching that class there were websites for people to register themselves as survivors similar to the ones that match birth parents with children they gave up for adoption. I showed this woman where she could let the world know she survived and possibly someone would find her. 

Today I find the Yad Vashem website to be increasingly comprehensive and a wealth of information.

Truly it seems as if there is more information on Jewish people of the holocaust era than ever.

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OFF AND RUNNING : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

OFF AND RUNNING : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW
A Jewish Lesbian couple adopted three children.  Two of them, teenagers, a son and a daughter appear to be African American or Black.  The son has no interest in connecting with birth parents.  The daughter, Avery, who is the focus of this film, does.  Encouraged by her two mothers and of her own desire, she first contacts the agency that did the adoption.  She learns that her birth mother has never contacted them.  She persists and writes her birth mother a letter - and waits - and then another.  It seems the woman doesn't want to tell her too much about how she cameo be.  The delays, hesitations, and minor details she is willing to provide, mess up Avery.

She is the daughter of privilege as is, but, a track star with hopes of a college scholarship, she quits high school and thinks about a GED instead.  She's on the pill but she gets pregnant, and sure that she would never want any of her children adopted, she has an abortion.  She moves in with friends and out of the house, because she feels the tension over the birth mother and adoption issue is too much.

The whole time I was watching this film, I was thinking about adoption issues  Is it nurture or nature that makes us? 

Reaching into the experience of someone I'm related to my marriage, I think of a situation in which a child was adopted at about the age of 4 years old by two educated and working parents who were childless.  This child was treated well, not abused, and this child wanted for nothing but wasn't spoiled.  Still, as he neared teenage years he became a rebellious, violent, and hateful child, capable of saying horrible things to his parents, even striking his mother.  When he was 18 he was encouraged to find his siblings, who he had vague memories of, with the hopes that with some answers he would better find his place in the world.  Well, he did, and it turned out both parents were drug addicts who had overdosed or suicide, not all the children had been adopted, two of the siblings had quit high school and had babies without fathers, and one of his siblings was in prison. He had it better than any of them.  For whatever reason this knowledge made him worse.

Then there is the question of placement with a family. Avery appears to be African American or Black.  Very few African American or Black people in the United States are Jewish.  Usually they are Christians and Protestants.  Then there is the question of gay people, be they single or married, having children by adoption, surrogates, or sperm donations.  Frankly there are so very many children out there who need to be adopted, and in some places it's difficult to adopt unless you own a home, for instance.  Some children go through hell in foster care, though there are loving foster care homes.  To me anyone who is a decent human being who can be a responsible parent and wants to be should be allowed to.  But it can be complicated.

One thing that I felt was odd was how the discussions within the family seem to have a lot of analysis like you'd get in therapy.  (When I was growing up NOBODY talked therapeutic terms and if someone was in therapy it was considered their business.)  Avery states her needs in a sophisticated way, but she's still a child, and clearly what she wanted out of her birth mother was more acceptance.

A thought provoking film, the good news is that this young woman gets her life on track and decides to put off the birth mother until she's graduated from college.

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RUMORS OF JEWISHNESS - GENEALOGY RESEARCH MAY PROVE IT TRUE or NOT

Rumors of Jewishness?  Maybe you're pretty sure this cannot be true because you were not raised in Judaism and you don't know of a living relative who is. 


Some time ago I met a woman who told me a heartbreaking story.  She had become ill.  She had two children.  Her marriage wasn't working out.  She was forced to put her children in foster care.  She was telling me this because she wanted me to know that she had been diagnosed and if she ever collapsed onto the floor, I should not hesitate to call 911.  She said if she collapsed there was a very limited period of time in which she could be saved.  Eventually, her children were adopted.  She felt bad about this but had no choice. Her illness had remained both documented and a mystery for two long for her to get well enough to care for them.  She had endured a lot of medical tests, a lot of questions, long term hospitalization and nursing care.  And she was in her twenties!   She explained to me that she had been raised Presbyterian.  Her aunt was a major donor to a wealthy Presbyterian church.  It wasn't until she was near death that this aunt showed up at the hospital and revealed to the doctors that actually their family was Jewish.  This was the clue that lead them to a diagnosis.  She could have died!  When I looked at this women I never thought, "Oh she looks Jewish!"


There is a special kind of genealogy myopia that happens when an American is looking to prove or disprove rumors of Jewishness in the family.  That is that Americans tend to think that Jews have "Jewish surnames."  That they mean is commonly known names, like Cohen or Levi, or the German Jewish names, like Rothschild!  But, in fact, Jewish people have changed their names to fit the culture they are living in, or shortened them, or made them into an English equivalent, like an associate I had whose family turned Zukor to Sugar.

So don't get hung up on the surname.  Or the given name.


As for given names, as I understand it, observant Jews have their special Jewish names, but their legal names may or may not seem Jewish.  Again we need to be careful not to assume that names like Rebecca or Noah, mean the person is Jewish.  In fact, names that appear in the Bible - New and Old Testament - have long been used by Christians and Jews alike.  For instance, Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, are names rooted in Hebrew.   Any name of an apostle of Jesus Christ, including John and Phillip and Peter, could be Jewish. 


At one point I was researching a family in the south who seemed to have one possibly given name that could be Jewish in every family.  There was a Sarah among women called Dixie on the census.  They had Jewish rumors, but I went back generations and never found anyone buried in a Jewish cemetery, or any other evidence.  Some of the surnames in this family fit into some of those considered to be Melungion.  Some of the given names were those of Greek or Roman gods.  Of course, there's the question of How Jewish?  Seems to me that for some people, ten generations ago is as good as now, for others, not so much.


There are families who kept their conversions a secret, or who are many generations away from a single, clearly Jewish ancestor.  So what a researcher needs to do is start looking at burials.  There used to be rather strict rules about who gets buried in a cemetery, and looking at burials, as well as death certificates, is a good clue.  You might want to look at obituaries.  Mention of a temple or rabbi officiating is a clue.  Likewise, marriages, and birth records reveal those who were recognized to be Jewish at birth or united in marriage in Jewish tradition.  There are also so many converts to Judaism,  Ivanka Trump being a noteworthy individual who did so before marrying her husband, Jared Kushner.  As I understand it, in America there are a great many marriages between Jewish and Not Jewish individuals.


Today there are many secular or non-practicing Jews, people who do not belong to a temple, follow special dietary laws, or respect the tradition of Sabbath.  So DNA testing may help you get to meet some Jewish relations, or you may just have to realize that being Jewish is also sometimes a choice.


Check with your local Jewish Genealogy Society for information that may be more particular to your quest!


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SHOULD SHE HIRE A RESEARCHER IN POLAND? : QUESTIONS FROM READERS of ANCESTRY WORSHIP - GENEALOGY

Question:

Hi there.  I'm trying to trace a line of ancestors that came from Galicia, Poland, and am not Jewish.  I joined Jewish Gen and have looked at their databases but wasn't actually expecting anything to come up for me.  Latter Day Saints doesn't have anything useful.  Should I hire someone in Poland to do the research for me?  Any advice would be appreciated.   Anna


Answer:


Anna,

As I understand it there are reliable people in that part of Poland who can walk into archives and do research for you. Before you hire someone though, at least research what archives you can expect the information to be in. Be prepared to hand over - by mail - the research you've done that would lead the researcher to these people, some documentation that you deserve to have the information, such as an explanation in a letter - preferably translated into Polish - on how you are related to them. Present any researcher with a list of the goals you want to achieve and have focused upon. Have a clear idea about how much you can afford and how much time you want to allow for the research to be done. As you know, sometimes information is found very easily and sometimes you have to dig.  There is no such thing as a "rush order" genealogy.

What you are hoping for is someone who knows their way around and has developed a personal relationship with some of the people who work in the state run and church run archives that hold documents. You can always reassess as the project goes on.  Have the person mail you copies of what documents they find, even if this can all be done by e-mail, uploading photos and so on. Be sure that they are checking in with you and giving a progress report at least every other week.

As for how to hire someone who does this professionally and what their background might be, for this I think I would make some phone calls and other inquires based on the region and town where you expect they lived before immigration. JewishGen might be a useful tool for you, since they have groups based on towns and regions and people reporting in when they do heritage tours.  However, consider contacting the priest at the local church for a referral.  Call heritage tour operators, even if you have no plan to go soon yourself, and ask them who they might know there.  Also the Polish Genealogical Society in Chicago might have some leads.  See if you can talk to the people who have hired someone on the phone to get a feel for how it went. 
Yes there are some areas of Poland, some areas all over the world where the Latter Day Saint Missionaries have not been allowed to copy or film.  We are spoiled by the ease of renting films from them instead of traveling ourselves or hiring others.

Wishing you the best on this, Anne!

C 2016 Ancestry Worship - Genealogy BlogSpot

GILES FRASER ON THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA THAT SPAWNED SURNAME CHANGES in HIS JEWISH FAMILY

THE GUARDIAN - GILES FRASER - HAUNTED BY FAMILY'S PAST  by GILES FRASER

"The Lusitania sinking in all likelihood triggered the process by which the family rabbi became, a century later, the family priest."

EXCERPT:

When the Liverpool-registered ocean liner the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by U-boats on 7 May 1915, the Rev Samuel Friedeberg was serving as a rabbi at the Princes Road synagogue in Liverpool. For days following the sinking, anti-German riots plagued the city. Shop windows were smashed and factories believed to be owned by Germans were attacked. Foreigners were roughed up on the street, often with little discrimination as to their place of origin.

The chief constable of Liverpool contacted the government to request the assistance of the army. A few months later, the Rev Friedeberg changed his surname to Frampton. Other parts of the family followed suit and became Freemans or Frasers. It became a pretty common thing to do. A few years later, Battenberg became Mountbatten.

For my family, the change of name occasioned by the public reaction to the sinking of the Lusitania, 99 years ago this week, was probably the crucial move in 300 years of cultural assimilation – a process by which the family rabbi became, a century later, the family priest. And this feels extremely odd, almost like something of a betrayal. I am Giles Fraser, son of Anthony, son of Harold, son of Louis, son of Mark, son of Moses, son of Jacob, son of Judah, son of David. All English Jews stretching back to the early 18th century.