May 2012
22 posts
7 tags
Ask-Ancestry-Anne: Favorite Search Tip #1 - Shaky...
Search Tip #1: Have Ancestry.com do the work for you
Ancestry.com won’t find everything that’s out there, but if someone can deliver records about ancestors to you, why not take advantage of it? That leaves you more time to understand the record and then find more!
In the header, you’ll see the hint notification leaf:
If you click on it, we will show your most recent...
The 1945 Yalta Conference, WWII
My mother, born outside Boston in 1897 would on occasion refer to her cousin Julia, and what a world traveler she was. Thru Ancestry.com, I have connected to two of my cousins, sisters, who were able to help me fill in the story of our Julia. Using their recollections and Ancestry.com tools, the story of Julia, who never married and never had a child, is none-the-less revealed and woven into our...
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Kris Williams: Genealogy & Your DNA
Just recently I received my AncestryDNA kit results and I can honestly say I was pretty shocked by them. For the most part, on my father’s side, my family has been in this country since the Mayflower - or came on ships that followed soon after. Others came down through Canada from Nova Scotia. Everything I knew about my Dad’s side of the family brought me back to England and Scotland. My mother’s...
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Happy Ending
Ancestry.com is not just for tracing family roots. It can also be a medium to connect with missing family. For 30 years, we were aware of the existence of my husband’s biological brother and sister but had no place to look.
My mother did all the genealogy work for me before she passed away so I joined Ancestry.com to put it all into one place. It has been several years now and I have lots...
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Family and Friends
My sister’s and I inherited several boxes when my mother past away full of family goodies from the mid 1800 to 2001. But one funeral card we found in one of the boxes had an unfamiliar name. We searched looking for a connection, thinking and brain storming who could it be. Finally looking through the 1940 census, the man on the funeral card was my grandfather’s next door neighbor. ...
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Check "The Line" on the 1940 Census
I remember my mother and friend gossiping about “the line” which referred to the supplemental questions that appeared twice on each 1940 census page. “Did you know that so-and-so was ‘on the line’ when the enumerator arrived?” To my surprise, it was my mother who was “on the line.” The info at the bottom of the page didn’t add much to what I...
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Great Stories from the 1940 Census
I was able to work on the 1940 census with my Mom. She turns 80 this coming Jan. We not only found Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and cousins. We found the doctor that delivered my and the doctor that delivered my father 81 years ago. My father was the first C-section done in Murphysboro, Ill. One doctor read the instructions from a book while the other preformed the operation.
Just going...
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Ask Ancestry Anne: Elusive Relatives in...
Question: My Grand Parents names are Bion (Bert) Egbert & Florence Edna Waldo and they lived at 237 S. Hayes Bakersfield California. I found this information in the U.S. Directory. Also My Great Grand Parents Henry Dobbs & Julia Dobbs lived at 49 S. Hayes in Bakersfield Ca There were other family members that were living on that street. I have looked through about 400 pages...
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A Hero Connected
I posted a military page in my Kelly Family Tree for a second cousin, twice removed—Sylvester Milas Bolick. He was not in my direct line but I was fascinated by him because he was killed in World War II, is buried in Belgium and had received a Purple Heart.
In February, I got an e-mail out of the blue from a man in Belgium who had found the public military page I had set up for Sylvester last...
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My Aunt Was a Census Enumerator!
I discovered one of my aunts, her husband and three children at the start of a census district I thought my grandparents would be in. (I haven’t been able to find them yet.) After searching through the E.D., I went back and started at the beginning again. When I did, I noticed that the listed enumerator was Clara B. McCord, my aunt and one of my mother’s older sisters. This was a...
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1940 Eye-Opener
Like many other family genealogists, I anxiously awaited the arrival of the 1940 US Federal Census. It was going to answer so much about not only my family, but my husband’s family as well.
The Guam census was one of the first to be downloaded and as soon as all districts were in, I began combing through every last page beginning with district one, page one. I already knew that the...
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The Lost Months of 1940
In February of 1940, my father walked out on his wife and eight-month old son in California, never to be heard from again by them or anyone in his family. He re-surfaced six months later in New Jersey using a different last name, and shortly thereafter met my mother. They dated, married, and raised my brother and me. It wasn’t until 37 years after his death that I discovered this on...
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1940 Census brings a family stories to life...and...
Early in their marriage my grandparents lived in Washington, D.C., having moved there from Philadelphia as newlyweds. Growing up in nearby Maryland, I remember listening to stories of their time in the capital. They both had fond memories of going to the National Zoo, and poignant recollections of being at stadium watching the Redskins play the Eagles at Griffiths Stadium on Pearl Harbor Day.
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April 2012
33 posts
18 tags
Israel Arbeiter: Ready to Return to the United...
After 8 days that took him from Warsaw, Poland to his native city of Plock in Poland, to Krakow and finally into Germany, where he gained his freedom in 1945, Izzy is tired.
At 87 years old he has the right to be.
After seeing his parents and brother shipped off and murdered at Treblinka, his friends and other relatives also killed in the concentration camps, he has said his final goodbyes to...
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Prisoner A18651 Returns to Auschwitz
Contributed by Tim Gray, chairman of the non-profit WWII Foundation. For more information about the foundation, visit www.wwiifoundation.org
The majority of Holocaust survivors have not the desire nor the will to return to the place where they lived through the most disturbing moments of their life and watched others die in ways still not easy to describe more than 70 years later.
Today in...
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Life Advice…From the Grave
My great grandfather, Abramo Donato Cantelli was born in San Donato, Italy on February 4, 1903. He was only six years old when he boarded a ship headed to America called the Canopic Line with his mother and two brothers. After two seasick weeks they finally landed in Boston where Abramo’s father was waiting for their arrival.
Abramo attended school until he was 12 years old, leaving to work at...
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Izzy Arbeiter Waves Goodbye to Plock
Israel Arbeiter said his final goodbye today to his home city of Plock, Poland.
At 87, Arbeiter will most likely never again be healthy enough to return to the city that gave him life 87 years ago, but is now more remembered as the place where he last saw his mother, father and youngest brother alive. His father’s final words before the Nazis separated his family in the city square were both calm...
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Israel Arbeiter Returns To Plock
Contributed by Tim Gray, chairman of the non-profit WWII Foundation. For more information about the foundation, visit www.wwiifoundation.org
Israel Arbeiter was 14 when the Germans took over his city of Plock, Poland on September 3, 1939. There were an estimated 10,000 Jews living in Plock (pronounced Plotsk) in 1939. You would be hard pressed to find a handful in 2012, maybe 2 or 3? Where did...
