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.

MISSING MOM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

 MISSING MOM : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY FILM REVIEW

Although this film reaches its conclusion with mom found, after near a quarter of a century missing, and it was an act of bravery on her son's part to be willing to risk such a personal story, sadly I felt like there was a whole lot unsaid and untold. Maybe the real story actually began after filming.

Beginning in 2014, two brothers with different fathers went looking for the mother who abandoned them. They gave it a year max. They didn't use genealogy but they did interview relatives (an important skill for genealogists), network, travel extensively, and mostly depend on social (internet) networking and Canadian police officers willing to give small clues, not much more.

One of the cool things they did was use an app that uses a photo of a person and ages them. You'll have to decide how close the app came.

What's weirder? A woman marries twice and has two sons, one with each husband, but splits? Or that when she split not a single family member kept track of her or filed a missing persons report? Seems to me she was thrown away. And these people didn't say a word about her until the sons started asking. Rob, born in 1960, whose quest it was first, also had a dad that abandoned him so he was raised by his mother's parents.

What could have happened that this family didn't care to find their daughter? Or ex-husbands  - the mother of their sons?

Reportedly, mom had a normal childhood in which she exhibited talent as an ice skater and an outgoing personality. She got work in the hospitality industry, restaurants and resorts, which makes sense to me since she was a people person. Implied is that she was partying. 

But hey. What do average people do for work or fun in Canada?

What if this were Appalachia?

They didn't want to hire a PI and I don't blame them. 

Rob's mom's father doesn't care if he ever sees her again. Why not?

Through posting on the Internet, which they did as well as taking paper flyers around to restaurants, the sons get a phone number for mom, call, she readily agrees she is the mother and she and her son tell each other they love each other.

They do? They don't know each other. But OK, they mean well.

I'm sorry, she might have "disappeared" but she probably knew where they were all along. She had given up. Maybe forced to. What were the terms of the custody agreement?

Something more was going on. Something as simple as poverty. Or as complicated as alcoholism or bad men.

I watched this film hoping to learn some new tricks. I didn't. I saw the value of public postings and photos but winced at the lack of privacy; mom's all over the Internet without her knowledge or permission then gives her side of the story at the end.

Sad.

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FORENSIC GENEALOGY?

Forensic Genealogy is the use of genealogy in order to locate missing people and solve crimes, a juicy subject.

I recently attended a lecture by a well regarded and experienced Forensic Genealogist. She told about doing numerous family charts in order to locate someone who might know where a woman who had gone missing might be.  This was not exactly a teenage runaway situation.  There had been a remarriage, a step-parent, and the person intentionally cut off from everyone.  That's difficult to do.  Maybe her reasons wouldn't seem rational to you or me, but the Forensic Genealogist sought to give her family "closure." And they got it.  She had lived for many years but had commit suicide.  She had done what many people do when they want to get lost.  She had assumed the identity of a person who had died who was about her age. Other than assume this identity, and gather together the paperwork she would need to prove who she was and keep her cover, she was never involved in any other "criminal" activity.  I looked at some web sites that tied to the Forensic Genealogist's and some of them started out using the word "Criminal" because of "Identity Theft" on this person who needed to get lost as she saw it, and I sort of cringed. 

While listening to the lecture I thought about Missing Persons.

Tell me, if YOU hated your family, maybe had a terrible childhood, and you wanted to get lost, if you never wanted to hear from them again,what would you do?  Expect the FBI or CIA to create a new ID for you?  Law enforcement does those things for people in Witness Protection Programs sometimes. Tombstone websites would certainly make locating someone your age who died more accessible to you, easier than prowling cemeteries in other towns by yourself!

It turned out that yes, there was ONE person, a distant family member, who had contact with her and kept her secret for many years. That he kept her secret makes me think that she had some good reasons to leave and be in hiding.  My guess, the stepfather molested her.


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RED CROSS MISSING PERSONS

THE RED CROSS: Did you know that you can STILL use their MISSING PERSON'S SERVICE to locate Holocaust and others from the World War II era?

There are now other MISSING PERSON LOCATORS available now for more recent natural disasters such as Haiti.