Brick Wall Update 2022

It has been ages since I've done this, so I thought I would revisit the biggest blocks in my family tree.

Here are the branches I'm focusing on at this time: 

• Seneft (also Senft and Senefft) and Hillinger (also Hilinger)
• Kresch and Reich
• Park and Dunlop
• Curran and Blair
• Jones and Griffths
• Roberts and either Griffiths or Pugh

Seneft/Hilinger/Kresch/Reich Lines

I have made some small movement on these lines since delineating them. I now know all of my great-grandparents' siblings, and the names of the places they were born. I've managed to get in touch with a few cousins out there with helped with both, but it still has gotten no further back. As of this time.

As I said in my last post, I now know all my great grandparents' siblings, thanks to two different distant cousins, one in England, and one in Israel. I've also found a small handful of records, and have a long list of questions about both sides.

For the Senefts, I don't know when they left Galicia, where my great-grandfather was born, and came to England. I also discovered, through my grandfather's draft papers, that apparently Alex, his father, was in the military in 1899, during the Boer War. I don't know anything about his service, just the date, and that he obviously survived, or we wouldn't be here today. I also don't know Alex's sisters' Hebrew names, or his younger brother's Hebrew name. Anne, Jennie, and Jack, all I have is their Anglicized name. I also have had no further luck learning who Lewis Greenbaum was beyond either Leon or Mindel's nephew, but I keep looking for him, too.

For the Kresches, I have less info, but also less questions. I don't know what happened to my great-grandmother's brother Chaim/Haim after World War I (though I can guess). I also don't know when her father died. Unfortunately, in both these questions, I have little hope of finding more information, given how "unimportant" any records related to these two things were to the non-Jewish population in those areas, so I have little hope of finding more information. 

In both families, I have no ancestors before my great-great grandparents, or am I certain where any of them were born, though I presume most if not all were born in Galicia. 

If you have any information on any of these families that might answer these questions, I would love to talk to you.

Park/Dunlop/Curran/Blair

This one's seen some great movement, thanks to my cousin Kate, who has been pushing and pushing at the Park branch in particular, and who will be going to Ireland sometime soon. We now know for certain that our mutual ancestors were David Park and Mary Dunlop, whose son married Elizabeth Curran and came to the US and had their children there before returning to Ireland for a time before moving to and settling in Canada.

There is also the more recent version of Ancestry's DNA, which shows both of our ancestry as far more Scottish than either of us suspected. From this, I presume that most of my Irish family actually came from Scottish stock, likely from one of the periods when it was easier to live in Ireland than Scotland. Park, Dunlop, and Blair are all very Scottish surnames, particularly Dunlop, so I presume most of my DNA was inherited from these lines. Curran is a very northern Irish name, so in that case, that's probably where I get my small amount of Irish DNA.

For the Park line, I actually believe we've answered all the questions I had in my last Brick Wall post here. So at the moment, this one is good, because we got at least one more generation back on this line, and until we can firm up some of this information, I actually think this line is good. 

As for Curran and Blair, nothing new has happened, but since all my questions were on the Park line, I think this one is good as well. So for now, I will let my Irish branch lie until I get further back in my bigger Brick Walls.

Jones/Griffiths

Like the Park line, I've had some success on one branch, and almost no more on the other. In this case, I have gotten no further on David and Mary Jones, given their far too common names. The Griffiths line, on the other hand, has grown far back, thanks to work others have done on Ancestry. I haven't entirely proven this branch, but I have so many more names, that I think that one's done for a good long time. So I will focus on Jones on this line for now.

At this moment, I need to know more about David Jones. Particularly where he was born, who his parents were, and what he did for a living. Mary, I have no surname for, so I would love to know who she was born to, and where, and how she met David. I also would like to know why the family came to Merthyr Tydfil. Did they all come there together? Did something happen with David, so only Mary and the two boys I currently have for them come to the town? I presume, from the fact that both Caio and Merthyr Tydfil had connections to mining, that perhaps David was involved in the Welsh mining industry?

Jones is a hard one, because the names are so common that narrowing it all down is still almost completely unhelpful, but I do keep looking.

Roberts

I have made absolutely no movement on this branch at all. All I know is that Hugh and Ellen had two daughters, and not if they had any other children. I still don't know for certain what Ellen's maiden name was, Pugh or Griffiths. At the moment, I have Hugh listed as being born 1819 in Merionethshire, Wales, and Ellen Pugh (how she was listed on my great-grandmother's death record) as being born in 1824, also in Merionethshire.

Currently I have the 1851 census of the family, which lists Hugh, Ellen, and their two daughters, Selina (at four years of age) and Elizabeth (only a year old). It's the only Census I've found for them as of yet, but it tells me several things--one, that they lived in the same area as Selina's husband-to-be, two, that she was their eldest (surviving) child, and three, gives me Hugh and Ellen's general age. Everything else is still very up in the air.

I also have a birth record for Elizabeth in 1850 that lists Hugh as a Driver, and that the family live in Beaumaris. Again, answers no questions, though the addition of a job for Hugh is nice. 

In an attempt to verify what proofs I have, I just discovered one more generation back. Because of this birth record, I know when Elizabeth was born, so I looked to see if there was anything else for her, only to discover a record of a 1861 Census showing her with her grandmother, Catherine Roberts. So I now believe that Hugh's mother was Catherine. The location is right, and the info for Elizabeth matches her exactly. So I just managed to find one step further back in my tree on this branch. In going through information on Ancestry, I can't prove more, but if what I've found is right, her husband may be Richard, though I have not yet settled on that, as I have a lot to go through before I decide that is correct, since the information doesn't give me enough to match precisely. So there you go, folks. Always remember to check through the records you have to see if anything new crops up. Ancestry and other sites are always updating their information. You never know what you might find.

But that said, a single name for Hugh's mother isn't enough to call this unblocked. I still don't entirely know his family. I need to find something that connects him to a Richard or another father to firm this up. I also want to know if he had any siblings, and whether he and Ellen had any other children. I did see one person on Ancestry had parents for Ellen, but no record proofs, so I don't know where those parents came from, so I have not assumed they are correct at this time, which means I need her parents still.

I'd love to talk to anyone who shares this branch of their family tree with me. Any help digging further back would be greatly welcome.

52 Ancestors: Textile - Mom and the Howells line

I couldn't tell you how long I've been fully aware I was Welsh in descent. Possibly it's just something I've always known. My great-grandmother Nain (Eliza Jones) was very proudly Welsh, though she lived most of her life in Canada, and kept up correspondence with her cousins still back in Wales in the Welsh language. So it's something that's always been there for me.

However, when I started to dig into my family, in family documents and also some documents I've found online, I learned that this branch of my family, the Howells/Gabriel line, were from before my great-great grandfather's line, were known for their weaving. His father's profession is listed as weaver in Gabriel's birth record, among several others. He also owned a farm, so most records list him as a farmer, but family lore says that for generations, the Howells were known for their weaving. 

My presumption is that this weaving talent traces our line back to France and our Huguenot ancestors. Again, I have no proof of this except that I have read several pieces in an attempt to track down possible ways to identify this likely ancestor that mentions the Huguenot talent for weaving. 

This skill is something that even existed down to my mom. When she went to college, her degree was in textiles, and in weaving. Through my teen years, and even into my early adulthood, my mom had a full-sized loom in our house that she used for a time before it was finally given to family friends who could use it when she was no longer able. I still have strong memories of the notebook she made of different styles of weaving, and the effects they could give, and I remember her using that loom in my childhood, too. In particular, I remember a set of pillows she made with some of the woven cloth she'd made.

Short one this week, but an aspect of my family I'm very fond of. And someday, I hope to use this to prove our connection to the Huguenot heritage I have been told we have. Also, if any of my Gabriel or Howell cousins out there have done your DNA test, I'd love to hear if you got any proof that our line may have come from France. As of now, my Welsh DNA seems to be purely Welsh, so we may be too far descended from that ancestor for any of us to inherit it, but if anyone did get some, I'd love to hear about it.

Surname Sunday 3.0 - Bordewick and variants

The Bordewick name is the most fractured name in my family tree. I have several spellings to it, including my mother's maiden name, which is the one I use to label all my posts about this branch of the tree. The name originated likely in Germany, though we have not been able to find more than that it was based on the town the progenitor of our family line came from Bardowick, Germany. A short listing of the variants: Bordvig, Bordwig, Bardevich, Bordweich, and of course, Bordwick. These are the ones I will focus on in this post, though I could go much further, if I wanted to be all inclusive for this name. Suffice to say, five is plenty.

Bordewick:

According to Forbears, the name Bordewick is held by 336 people in the world. The largest number of which live in The US. Germany is the second most populous, which is where we believe our line comes from, and Norway and Canada which also figure strongly in our family story, are third and fourth respectively. 

Here's the distribution of the Bordewick name throughout the world. The darker the color, the bigger the representation of the name:

Here is the distribution in the US, where we currently live:

As you can see, the name spelled that way is the most prevalent in Illinois, and not in Washington where we currently live.

And here is the name distribution in Norway, where my great-grandfather was born:

This doesn't even show where he was born highlighted as all, likely because his grandfather spelled his name Bordewich, which is our next set of maps.

Bordewich:

Forebears says that there are currently 74 people in the world with this spelling of the surname, which surprises me. I thought it was the more common spelling of the surname, but maybe I am wrong? Again, it lists the US as having the most Bordewichs, followed by Norway. There are even two in England, and surprisingly to me, one in the Philippines. 

Here's the world map for Bordewich:

And here's the map for the US, showing Minnesota as the most populous state (not a shock at all, really):

And Norway, which does show Northern Norway as a secondary population center for the spelling, which is where my great-grandfather was born:

Bordvig:

There are two other spellings of this surname, as I have listed above, but this is the last I will cover, as Bordwig and Bardevich do not show on Forebears at all. Bordvig has a tiny showing on the site, listing only 2 people currently using the spelling of the name in the world, both in Norway. 

Here's the map showing world placement:

And Norway:

I know that for our family, the surname solidified to Bordewich with my great-great grandfather Johan Petter, who spelled his name with the ch, and once more when my branch of the family moved out of Norway, possibly when they moved to England, where it became listed as Bordewick. I'm not entirely sure what my progenitor was born with at all, nor how he spelled his surname, but hopefully someday one of our line will find papers with his signature and preference for name on them. Until then, I can only speculate.

52 Ancestors: Food and Drink - Henrik Bergithon Bordewick

So I struggled a little with this one, and thought I needed to do this about the Jones branch, then realized I didn't have anything planned this month for the Parks or Bordewicks, and this thought came to me. It's perfect, so I had to go with it.

My grandfather owned a fishing boat for much of my early childhood, and used to go fishing and bring home salmon for the family to eat at our gatherings together. It's a past-time he inherited from his father, who inherited it from his. The Bordewick clan originally came from the Lafoten Islands in Norway. One of the commercial industries there is fishing. But when my great-grandfather was young, the fishing dried up for a time. Less of a haul for those making a living off the fish. So my great-great grandfather Henrik and his brother Eivind (I believe) decided to try to make more money off the small amount of fish they could catch by setting up a concern outside of Norway. Eivind chose to stay in Norway to do the fishing, while my great-great grandfather and his family left to head to Belgium in an attempt to set up business there.

So my family left Norway, along with a few girls to help my great-great grandmother around the house, one of whom was her elder sister's daughter. I'm not sure if the other two were related to the family or not, but I have determined that much, at least. Unfortunately, this was about the same time as the Boer war, and unfortunately, the Belgians saw the family name, and thought they were English. We have distinct stories of the family being spat upon on the street. So they moved to England, near where my great-great grandmother's younger brother lived. 

At that point, my great-great grandfather got out of the shipping industry, and became part of the shipping industry with his brother-in-law, who was already well established in the trade. We believe that it was sometime around this move (either right before or right after they moved here) that the name changed from Bordewich to Bordewick. They stayed in England for around ten years or so. Long enough for the family to become citizens of the UK before moving again, this time to Canada, to be close to another of Henrick's wife's siblings, her younger sister. They stayed there, settling in Vancouver BC, and living there for another twenty years before Henrik died at the age of 68.

Of their three sons, only one had children, my great grandfather, Bjarne. He and his wife had two boys, one who was lost at the beginning of World War II, and the other who was my grandfather. So he is the one who carried on the family legacy, and had a series of boats he used to fish from, and provide our family with fresh caught fish during fishing season. It's a legacy that has been gone since my uncle sold his boat several years ago, and with neither myself or my sister interested in carrying on that legacy, as we are the only two grandkids in our family. Still, it's a fascinating family history that I treasure, even if it's a skill now lost to us, unless one of my sister's kids chooses to take it up one day. You never know.

52 Ancestors: Social - Marilyn and Danskfest

When I was in my teens, I went down to California with my grandparents and participated in something I would later learn was the first Family reunion for Nana's family. My great-aunt Marilyn called it Danskfest. I got to meet many relations I'd never met before, though as young as I was, I don't remember most of them. But I'm so glad I got to go. I'm so glad I got to see how connected Nana's family were to each other.

Nana is the eldest of three children. Her sister Marilyn was a few years younger, and they had a younger brother, Torben. Then, in 1929, when my Nana was 9, they lost their mother to pneumonia. It definitely affected their choices in life. Nana ended up going to a boarding school to get away from home and her new stepmother, whom she did not get along with. And after finishing school, she went off to join in the war efforts as soon as she was able to enlist. She even went to Europe after the war was over to help out over there, where she met and married my grandfather. 

After her mother's death, Nana and her siblings kept a close relationship with their father's brother and his wife, seeing them almost as secondary parents, and so they had a very strong connection to their father's side of the family. But they lost touch with their mother's family almost immediately after her death. The one sibling their mother had in the states vanished from their life, and so they had no knowledge of their mother's side of the family growing up. After their father's death, Marilyn felt the need to seek out their mother's side of the family, to reconnect and find out more about where their mother was from. It's because of her that I have so much of that side of my family tree. She and Nana and their brother found what info they could on their mother, and then Marilyn wrote to the area they thought their mother was born. It was from this letter that we got the knowledge of her parents' names, and her siblings names as well. This led to a trip to Denmark, where Marilyn met their mother's family still living there, and so much more knowledge.

But I think the ultimate outcome of all this family searching was the idea to hold a family reunion. She invited family from all around the country, and even extended invitations to family across the ocean--both in Europe, and even in one case, Australia. It lasted until her house burned down in the early 90s, though I think there were some attempts to reinstate it, I don't think it ever quite managed. Still, for a time, we had a family gathering because of her. And because of her, the connections she and her siblings had to their extended family stayed alive a little longer. Even more, because of those gatherings, I know so very much about my family tree.

So thank you, Aunt Marilyn, wherever you are, for helping me learn so much about our family, and keeping us all so connected.

Surname Sunday 3.0 - Hillinger/Hilinger

Starting a new version of my Surname Sunday posts. Hopefully these will be interesting to everyone. I'll go over major versions of my surname, and the places they are from, and the stats as found at the site Forbears.

Hillinger/Hilinger: 

According to Forbears, the name Hillinger is held by 1,361 people in the world. The largest number of which live in Austria. Germany is the second most populous, which is where my grandfather was born, and the US where we now live, is third. 

Here's the distribution of the Hillinger name throughout the world. The darker the color, the bigger the representation of the name:

Here is the distribution in Austria:

And here is the distribution in Germany, where my grandfather was born:

By all rights, I should look at the numbers in Poland, because that's where my grandfather's grandmother, from whom we get the Hillinger name, was likely born. However, there don't appear to be any now, so that map is entirely grey. But in this instance, her name was spelled with only one L, so I also did a glance of the distribution of the name Hilinger as well.

According to Forbears, the name Hilinger is only held by 92 people in the world. The largest number of which live in Spain. There are only three other countries with people using the name Hilinger in the world, Austria, Poland, and Sweden. I include this because I find it curious, with a possibility that perhaps our family has some Sephardic heritage because of this connection? I have no proof aside from this result, but it still fascinates me.

Hilinger:

The distribution across the world:

And the distribution in Spain:

Now, these are modern numbers, so it may mean nothing at all, but it still makes me wonder. I had hoped my DNA results might confirm this guess, but I presume it's either so wrapped up in my Eastern European Jewish results, or so slight that it just doesn't show. Or I never inherited that strain from my father. I don't know that this is a mystery that will ever be solved, given how hard it is to find records for this side of the family, but I can hope.

52 Ancestors: Document - The Lesson of Oertha

So many of these prompts have been too open-ended for me, and only by trying to consign myself to one family branch a week of my tree have I been able to come up with ideas for these posts. This is definitely one of those posts. I have so many fabulous records I could talk about, but in the end, I've settled on one that's not so much a record, but a hand written tree I had a copy of almost from the beginning.

My great-grandfather Holger's family stayed well connected through my childhood. Even to the point where my great-aunt held a yearly family gathering in her town of Idylwild in California. So I met many of my grandmother's close and distant cousins as well as other relations over the years. So their father's father's line is very well connected, even back in Denmark where they came from. Their father's mother's line, on the other hand, petered out after a few generations when I first received it, ending in a woman whose name I always had recorded as Oertha. I'd always thought it a bit odd, but as I searched, I found Oerthas here and there, so I figured it was a Scandinavian name, and chalked it up to that. But I never managed to get past that part of my tree. My third-great grandfather, Jørgen Larsen, was her son, which is an unfortunately common name in Denmark, so I despaired of ever getting further back.

Then, in the early 2000s, I made friends with several people online who were from Denmark, and still living there. I was pleased to tell them about my family, and how my grandmother was Danish, like them, even though she was born in the US. From time to time, they would help me out with that branch of the family, and with translations of the documents I found. Then, one day, I was nudging at Oertha again, and asked one of them if they'd ever heard the name before. We talked for a bit, and ended up focusing on Jørgan instead--which is what led to the breakthrough. We found the church book where his birth was recorded. And listed his parents' names as Lars Andersen and Birthe Marie Sørensdatter. 

It's not uncommon to get a name transcribed wrong when it comes to genealogy and family history, so I went back to my documents to see where the info had come from. I looked through several versions of the family tree to see how it was originally written, only to discover that "Oertha" had been handwritten at the very top of the page, so the top of the B in Birthe had been cut off, and with the handwriting had quickly turned into an O.

Because of this find, I have now gotten several more generations back on this line. So the lesson here? Just because it's always been listed that way on your family tree, don't take it for granted. Always question everything, because you never know where that info came from until you look into it. Especially when you're stuck there. Usually brick walls in your family tree come about because something was written down wrong somewhere. Come at it from a different angle to see if new information comes up. You never know what you might find.

52 Ancestors: Negatives - Hans Henrik Bordwig

While I'm sure most who do this prompt will talk about film found, or special prints, for me, this brought to mind one particular story once I thought about it, and I couldn't resist the chance to tell it because I don't think I have before here on this blog. It's the story of the beginning of the Bordewick line as far as we know, and what happened to that founder.

Hans Henrik Bordwig is my 4th great grandfather. According to family lore, he was born in or near Bardowick, Germany, but as a young man, he traveled north to become a sea captain in Norway. It was there he met and married his wife, Anna Magdalena Tiller, and became a citizen of that country. The couple had three sons: Ole, Johan, and Hans. Ole died within a year of birth, but Johan and Hans grew and married, though Hans died quite young, still in his thirties. So my 3rd great-grandfather was the only surviving son of that line, and its from him that the little we know about his father survives.

In Norway, Hans Henrik became the captain of a ship called De Tvende Venner, or The Twenty Friends in English. He carried cargo between Norway and England and the continent, but in 1812, Hans was in a shipwreck in Veilholmen, near the islands of Smolen and Hittern. The crew and their captain managed to reach shore, but froze to death before reaching the inhabitants. They were buried near Hittern Church. Johan was only ten years old.

I don't know a lot of how this affected Johan's life, though from what I do know, I can imagine. Johan lived to the age of 76, a good old age, and by that time, he'd married twice, and had a total of sixteen children. I know that from a young age, he went out to work, and I'm sure that was to help his mother after his father's death, as usually children weren't sent out to work until the age of at least thirteen, unless the family needed the money. He worked as a clerk for several years, eventually getting a job in the Lofoten Islands, helping to run a trading post there, which he ended up taking over when the owner had to leave (under mysterious circumstances, according to family lore--the owner was possibly on the run either from the law or from debtors, which meant he left it in Johan's capable hands). He even became the mayor of that town for a time in his later years. He himself never went to sea that I know, but at least one of his sons did, and made quite a good living at it. Johan made a great life for himself and his family, but I think he only worked all the harder because of his father's fate. 

Hans is one of our big family mysteries, because though many have dug into the records around Bardowick, we have yet to find a record of any sort for a Hans Henrik Bordwig or any variation. It likely means he changed his name upon appearing in Norway, and we have no way of tracking down what that may have been. We all keep looking though, in an attempt to break through that wall.

Update to Ancestry DNA

So while the Genealogical community here in the US has been going mad over the 1950 Census, Ancestry made an update to their site that hasn't been getting a whole lot of coverage that I have been able to find. In the middle of this month, they started a new section of the DNA results section of their site. If you have had your DNA done by Ancestry,  you now have a new section called Ethnicity Inheritance. This splits your DNA matches based on whether they think they are your father's relations or your mother's, and in doing so, narrows down your DNA results based on whether they are your mother's or father's. 

I think this is my favorite change to the DNA results since I first got my DNA tested. I have a lot of things in my results that make me curious, and this definitely answered some questions for me. 

These are my results.  As you can see, it splits your results between your parents based on where they presume those results come from. As I said, this is based on the matches you get on Ancestry. 

In this case, I can see that Parent 1 is my dad, because he is the one whose father was Jewish, so even if there were a small section of Jewish on the other side, I'd know that the major Jewish results should come from his father, and therefore should be about a quarter of my results. In this case, I'm happy to see that even though I have more than a 25% result of Jewish in my results, they all come from my dad's side of the tree. Until now, I've had a possibility that perhaps there were some hidden Jews on my mom's side of the tree, but as you can see, I don't have any Jewish coming from her side of the tree at all. At least according to their presumptions. This doesn't preclude some hidden Jews on my dad's mom's side, but one of dad's first cousins on her side of the tree did have her results done, and she has no Jewish results in her DNA, so I'm going to assume that I am right here and all the Jewish results come from my grandfather's side of the tree. I am hoping to convince one or both of my aunts to take a DNA test to confirm this, but for now, I'm happy. For me, this proves that just got more than my share of my grandfather's DNA.

And this is my mom's results, which are fascinating when compared to mine, because you can see that very strong Welsh result in both. Now, I know her mother was Welsh. Both parents were born in Wales, so that's not a surprise. And while I was hoping this might narrow down whether or not we're Huguenot or not, unfortunately, this doesn't prove or disprove it. It just means if we are, it didn't get passed down to us, which is just as likely.

On the other hand, it does prove something about my great-grandmother on my grandfather's side. Granny was born in Philadelphia, but her parents were both immigrants from Ireland. They'd married in Armaugh, Ireland, now Northern Ireland, in 1883 before immigrating to the US. So we've always "known" we were Irish. I have record of them from the time they started having children in the US, but almost nothing before. I have since found out more, but of the four surnames I originally have for their families, the results are very interesting. Park, Dunlop, and Blair, three of my four third-time great grandparents's surnames, are very Scottish surnames. Quite often, you do find overlap between the two groups, especially in Northern Ireland, where a lot of poor Scots ended up after the Nobles in Scotland decided to use their land as pastureland and kicked out their tenants so they could. So I always knew it was possible, or even probable, that we had some roots in Scotland. But looking at my grandfather's half of this, with more than half Scottish ancestry, it appears that we're Scottish, and that that tiny wedge of Irish might not even be related to my great-grandmother, despite where her parents were born.

So two things definitively proven, at least to a very strong extent, but more questions. And that Finnish of my mom's makes me very curious. Given her father's father was at the very least German and Norwegian in descent, the mixed info on his side between the English/northern European, Swedish/Denmark, Norway, and Finland numbers, that looks about right for his side of the family. And having that random Finish section probably comes from some random inheritance over the generations there.

And I'm not the only one who has had a few questions answered. My friend, who had her DNA as well as her parents' and paternal grandparents' done about the same time I got mine done, managed to determine that the small amount of African DNA she has all comes from her mom's dad's side. We're very much looking forward to digging into all her results now that we can. it's all very exciting.

This change is the kind of thing that gives me hope for DNA technology. It's not about what they can initially do, because that stage is about trying to understand the data they're getting and what it means. But now that they've been doing this for years, we're learning more with each year that goes on. I can't wait to see what comes next.

So have you had your DNA done? If so, did this answer any of your questions? If not, does it make you want to try?

52 Ancestors: How do you spell that? Alex Seneft

My great-grandfather had several names in his life. He was born Elias Seneft, but by the time he was married he was known as Alec Hilinger, and when he died, Alex Hillinger. Why the change? Because the Germans didn't recognize his parents' marriage in a religious (Jewish) ceremony. His first name was because the family moved to England when he was young. He and most of his family used Anglicised nicknames to better fit in. I still haven't been able to figure out his younger brother or either of his sisters' Hebrew names at this time, though I keep trying to determine that.

Both Seneft and Hillinger are names that have caused several problems in my genealogy search. 

Hillinger is my maiden name, and for my whole childhood, I remember people mangling it. Missing one of the letters when they tried to pronounce it or spell it was a very common occurrence. Worse, when I first began my search, I assumed that Hillinger was the correct spelling, until I realized that my great-great grandmother spelled her name with one L. Or at least, that is what I have been told. So though there are Hillingers in Austria, it is quite possible that we're in no way related to them. At one point, I looked up the name Hilinger on a name mapping site that showed you where the name was most commonly found. The country that came up when I did was Spain, which I found quite fascinating. If that's true, it's quite possible that we're possibly Sephardic Jewish on that branch somewhere. But I have no way to prove it at this time.

Seneft is even more confusing. Some records show it as Senft, some as Seneft, and one branch in England specifically used Senefft. While most searches on genealogy sites do look for variants on a name, I have found it works better to look for all three variants to check for my family, as it only brings up a selection of possibilities otherwise. I will say it's made finding records proving anything about my great-grandfather's family very complicated. 

For a long time, I wasn't even sure of my great-grandfather's eldest brother's name. I'd narrowed it down to Isaac shortly before a distant cousin from that branch of my family got in touch. His grandfather, my great-grandfather's brother, is the one who used Senefft. And it's because I got in touch with him that I now know for certain his name was Isaac. Unfortunately, he and my great grandfather were the only ones of their siblings that had any kids, so none of the rest passed down their pictures or records to show their truths. I keep digging, but unless I get lucky, I doubt I will be able to find out much more about any of them.

Lessons from this branch include: the fact that names change over time. That names changed when people came to the US, not because the Ellis Island people changed them, but that the families changed them to fit into their new country better. That just because the name isn't spelled the way you expect doesn't mean that it isn't the right record. That Jewish people often have more than one first name they used in records. That names weren't a consistent thing before the turn of the 20th century. And that immigration causes loss of records quite often.

I will say that Jewish genealogy is one of the more difficult types of genealogy to engage in. So many moves, and so many attempts to wipe Jews from the face of Europe. People have done everything they can to make the Jewish people no longer part of our world. It's led to a scattering or actual destruction of the records on my people. And it's made those who still practice more secretive. 

Add to that the Mormon insistence on bringing everyone under their "god's" banner, and I have been very disinclined to help them "baptize" a people who have been struggling to keep their community together despite gentiles' insistence that they need to be done away with. If you are part of that church, I beg you to remember what happened to these people less than a Century ago. And what happened across Europe even before that. I would beg you to remember that yours is not the only belief, and to think of how you would feel if it were your mother, cut down by people who felt the Mormon faith needed to be expunged from the world that someone decided to bring her into their faith to "save" her. Don't do it. I don't care if you were related to these Jews or not. They would not have converted. Don't forcibly "convert" them now.

52 Ancestors: Check It Out - Daniel Jones

This one was a hard one for me, but eventually I turned the prompt on its ear. Instead of something I want to show off, I decided to go with something I wanted to see myself. And that is one of the places I've most wanted to see: Merthyr Tydfil, Wales.

I've actually been there once before, when I was still young. My family went to England and Germany when I was just starting fifth grade in school. I do have fond memories of the trip, but they are faint, and I really don't recall everything we did. So when mom found her journal and I was reminded that we visited the town her grandfather Daniel was born in, I was sad I really remembered almost nothing. All I can think is just how much time I'd want to spend there, see where my great-grandfather grew up, finding records about him and his parents. Maybe even meet relatives I've not met before. I believe some of his siblings' descendants still live there or in the area today.

My great-grandfather Daniel was born in Merthyr Tydfil in 1882. His parents ran the local post office, from what I have been told. I know he had several siblings, though I know almost nothing about any of them aside from a few stories here and there. I know that he lost one to pneumonia when he was still a young man, and that he had two younger sisters, including one who had a son about the same age as Daniel's own son who was born in the early 1920s.

Daniel also went out of his way to name one of his children for his hometown. When my great-grandmother sent him to go to register my grandmother's birth, they'd decided on a name, but when he returned, she learned that he had named her Merle Tydfil for his home. 

So you can see why I feel so attached and curious about this place my family has an origin in. I'd love to see the post office (or where it used to be). I'd love to look into the local stories, see where my great grandfather lived before he came to Canada.

So there you go, of all the places I'd like to Check Out, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales is definitely at the top of the list.

Howells Placeline

So I think this is the last post of this series, because as you can see, these are getting fainter in knowledge as I go back in time. I have thoughts as to what I might do next, but for now I think I'll go back to one post a week for a bit until I work up some new posts. I hope everyone's enjoyed these, even if just a little.

The Howells line, as I said a few weeks ago, is one I believe is of Huguenot origin, but as of yet, the Howells and Gabriels online have not yet managed to get far enough back to prove or disprove this link.

As always, Bold are Birth, Marriage, and Death locations, and Italics are other locations.

1. Eliza Anne aka Bessie Howells

A. New Westminster, BC, Canada. New Westminster is basically a suburb of Vancouver, and it was here where Bessie lived until her death at the age of 94. I'm so lucky I got to know her for as long as I got--ten years. I still miss my Nain.

B. Vancouver, BC, Canada. I'm not sure exactly when she moved to Vancouver, but it was here she met her husband, and here she made her life with him. All four of their children were born in Vancouver, and she lived here for more than half of her life.

C. Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. When the Howell family first came to Canada, they lived for a time with Bessie's uncle Louis, who had a farm in Saskatchewan, but soon moved to Winnipeg, where they lived for several years until the family slowly migrated one by one east because of the milder winters available in Vancouver.

D. Pontypridd, Wales. Pronounced Pant-ee-prith. This is where the family lived before Bessie's father finally decided it would be better for the family to move to Canada. Bessie's two younger siblings were born here.

E. Penrhiwceiber, Wales. Pronounced Pen-ruh-ky-ber. This is a small mining town in southern Wales where the family was living when Bessie was born.

2. Gabriel Howells

A. Vancouver, BC, Canada. In his later years, Gabriel and his wife Selina moved to Vancouver to be close to their children. They celebrated their 50th anniversary here, and lived here together until her death in 1933, and his in 1934, ten years after that anniversary.

B. Winnipeg, Manitoba, BC. After a short time in Canada, remembering why he didn't like farming, Gabriel moved the family to Winnipeg, where Gabriel was able to use his masonry skills to make a good living.

C. Pontypridd, Wales. Gabriel was working with the mines here, using his masonry to help shore up the mines before he realized that not actively doing the mining was no less unhealthy, and thus he decided it was time to find a less unhealthy job. He soon decided that it would be better to move to Canada and start a whole new life.

D. Penrhiwceiber, Wales. This is where the family moved to for a time before moving to Pontypridd, working with the mines to help with masonry there.

E. Dolgelly, Wales. Pronounced Dol-geh-lay. Also spelled Dolgellu, depending on when and where the record is written up. This is where the family lived while Gabriel was young, and it was here he met and married his wife, Selina. They started their family here, losing two children in an influenza epidemic and having four more children before moving south so that Gabriel could make money with his masonry skills, leaving the family farm to his younger brother to run.

F. Tywyn, Wales. This is the place I have always had as my great-great grandfather's birthplace. It is very close to Dolgelly, so it's possible he never lived here, but was just born her for some reason, as the ancestors I have listed for him only have Dolgelly as their place of residence from birth to death.

3. Howell Gabriel

A. Dolgelly, Wales.  This is the only location I have for Howell or the ancestors I have for him, I believe they lived and died here for many generations.

4. Gabriel Howel

A. Dolgelly, Wales. See Howel above. 

5. Howell Gabral

A. Dolgelly, Wales. See Howel above. 

6. Howel Gabriel

A. Dolgelly, Wales. See Howel above. If I am right, I believe this is the place my Huguenot ancestor settled after leaving France, but as of yet, I have no proof of that.

* 

And that's all the locations for this branch of the family, which gives me another 7 locations.

It's been very interesting looking into where my family lived, and I highly recommend going through your family's locations from time to time. It definitely helps you find things you may have missed before, or correct issues in your tree.

52 Ancestors - Sisters: Bessie and Catherine Howells

I have a few sister pairs in my family tree, but I couldn't resist the chance to talk about my Nain and her younger sister for this one. I have been told that my great-grandmother was very close to her younger sister, Catherine. They were born three years apart, and were two of the three youngest children of their family. Truly, I do not know much about their life or their friendship, only that Nain was very close to her sister.

I do know of a trip I believe they took together down to Seattle to the Alaskan Yukon Gold Rush Exposition. We have lots of shots of that trip, which was a long way to come in those days. We even have a few pictures of my great grandmother here in Seattle, which I have always been fond of once I found them.

As married women, they both lived in Vancouver, BC, and I imagine they likely spent a good deal of time together with their young children, though I imagine that got more difficult as they grew older. Nain had three girls before her sister had her first child, and her sister had only boys, though when my great uncle was born in the early 20s, I'm sure their children had fun playing together.

I wish I knew more about Catherine's life, because the records I find show that by the end of it, she was likely a very unhappy woman. I found a record of a daughter who died in infancy, and she had a series of at least five quick pregnancies in a row. It's a hard thing on a woman's body, just having one child. And to lose a child, and continue to have more so quickly, I'm sure had a detrimental effect on her mental health. The only reason I think this is because in 1937, she was sent to Essondale. In Vancouver, saying the name Essondale is equivalent to saying Bellevue in the US. It was an asylum. And not the good kind. I won't go into details here, but it was finally closed down in 1983, after a long history of some of the worst kinds of offences against mental patients. 

Catherine was not there long. Apparently she had a major depressive episode. She was there less than a month. The death certificate I have doesn't give details, only a statement that she died of "Exhaustion of Manic-Depressive Psychosis." I can only imagine what was truly wrong. Possibly the effects of untreated postpartum depression. Women's issues simply weren't given the right attention in those days. I try not to be angry at her husband for the fact that she ended up there. I don't know enough of their marriage to know if they were happy or not. All I know is that my great-great aunt was only 45 when she died, leaving behind at least two living sons, possibly as many as four, according to the records I have found.

It makes me sad, knowing that my Nain lost her sister this way, given how close she felt to her. I wish I'd known about her, and gotten to talk to Nain about her. I would have loved to hear her stories about her little sister, and their happy times together. 

Park Placeline

Just a year ago, this post would have been two generations shorter, as the g-g-g grandfather I had in this line was wrong. And I had literally nothing for him and his wife but names, and only a surname in this case. Now thanks to my cousin Kate, who kept digging and pushing until she found more information and got us a whole other generation back in the Park line. So thank you, Kate, for helping to expand our family tree. This family line was why I started my search. And aside from the above, I've made very little headway with them, so having that expansion was quite exciting. Who knows what we'll find now that we have more names.

As always, bold are important places for birth, marriage, and death records, and italics are other locations they lived in for at least a year.

1. Mary (May) Dunlop Park

A. Des Moines, Washington. When Granny grew too old to live on her own, my grandfather found a place for her here in Washington at a Masonic nursing home. My grandfather was a Mason, and used his connections to get her a very comfortable and pretty place to live. Despite that, she wasn't happy to be here. She remembered her youth in the US poorly, and hated how her father had been treated at that time. If she'd had her way, she never would have lived in the US again. But we were glad to have her close by, where we could see her, and I have fond memories of visiting her here several times before she passed away.

B. Vancouver, BC, Canada. My great-grandmother lived the majority of her life here in Vancouver. She moved here in her twenties, and lived here until late in her life. Here she met her husband, Bjarne, and here she had her two boys. I would venture to say it was the place she felt was her home.

C. Belfast, Ireland. At the time, it was before Irish independence, so I will call it just Ireland. For a short time before the Parks moved to Canada, they lived in Belfast.

D. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This is where Mary and all her siblings were born. Their parents came here from northern Ireland in 1883, and only left when it became too difficult to be immigrant Irish in the Eastern US, when they returned home to Ireland.

2. Robert James Park

A. Vancouver, BC, Canada. This is where my great-great grandparents settled finally with all their children, and lived until they passed away, which for Robert was almost twenty years, a good, long time. 

B. Belfast, Ireland. After no longer wanting to be in the US, the Parks returned to Belfast before moving again to Canada. The only reason I have this confirmed is because they were there long enough to be in the Irish Census for 1911.

C. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After Robert and Lizzie married, they emigrated to the US, settling in Philadelphia. According to the work my cousin Kate has done, it seems they had at least one if not several family members and friends from Ireland in their community. Robert made a living as a cabinet maker. It was only when the push against Irish immigrants began in the US in the 19-teens that they left and returned to Ireland.

D. Belfast, Ireland. I do not know at all how long Robert lived in Belfast, only that this is where he was when he married Lizzie. And I know this is where they left for America from.

E. Ballymena, Ireland. Robert was born in Ballymena, which is also in Northern Ireland. I know almost nothing about his life there, though he had at least two sisters and two older half brothers.

3. David Park Esquire

A. Ballymena, Ireland. I know almost nothing about David or his father. They are very new in my tree thanks to my cousin. I only know that David married twice, and had at least five kids between those wives. Nearly all the locations I currently have for him are Ballymena, so I presume he lived most if not all his life in or near the city of Ballymena.

4. John Park

A. Antrim, Ireland. I know even less about John than I do about David. I have four sons for him, but no spouse, and all his locations are in Antrim. 

*

We do have one more generation back, but no specific locations attached to him, so I will not include him here at this time. Six locations for this one. Very little information once I get back to Ballymena, unfortunately, but at least that is beginning to grow thanks to all the digging my cousin is doing.

52 Ancestors: Joined together - Sam & Maggie

One of the courting stories I didn't cover last month came immediately to mind when I saw this prompt, and I couldn't resist telling their story, especially after finding some new references to it when digging through the paperwork I had for something else earlier this year. My grandparents, Sam Hillinger and Maggie Hansen, both served in the Army during World War II, and both came through the war quite safely, and were eventually assigned to the Frankfurt area after the war to help with reorganization and cleanup. 

Maggie took her time in Europe to go visit her father's family up in Denmark when she was free of duties, but she also took an opportunity to go on an organized trip to relax. The Red Cross had organized trips to Switzerland for those who were helping with everything in Europe. I believe she told me her sister, who also served, was going to come with her, but didn't manage, so she chose to go alone, just to get away and relax. The trip was to Saint Moritz. Maggie found herself alone on a train, watching the scenery go by.

Sam had also decided to go on this trip with a group of his friends. But as the trip progressed, they grew loud, and upon seeing a young lady sitting alone on the train, he broke away from his friends and chose to sit with her. And this was how my grandparents met. Together, they learned how to ski, which remained part of their life until shortly before my grandfather passed away. My father still skis every winter, teaching others in our local ski areas.

Maggie and Sam at their Wedding Reception

But...that is only the beginning of their story. Maggie and Sam were both still part of the armed forces when they decided to marry, so like anyone in the armed service, they were required to ask permission to marry, and last month, I found the letters they both wrote up to request permission to marry. Permission was granted, of course, and so they were married in Frankfurt at the register's office with her sister and his best friend at their sides. The next day, they had a celebration with all their friends in attendance.

Nana told me that she'd always hated having no middle name. Her little brother had one, but she and her sister did not. She said that it was especially difficult during her time in the army, because she had to put something in the middle initial section of any form she filled out, which meant that when she filled out any form, her name became Margaret NMN (No Middle Name) Hansen. So she was very excited when she got married, because now she had three names: Margaret Hansen Hillinger.

Sam and Maggie started their family right there in Frankfurt. My father was born shortly before they got their chance to return home. They stayed for a short time in Ohio while my grandfather got his degree in accounting. Then they had to decide which of the offers Grumpy should take for a job. In the end, they chose Seattle because it was near enough to the mountains to ski. Our family has lived in the area ever since, and all of my dad's siblings were born here.

They celebrated their 50th anniversary in 1998, with crowds of friends and family in attendance. Grumpy passed two years later. We scattered his ashes at one of his favorite ski areas. Nana died ten years later, and her ashes were scattered on Mount Rainier. Any time the mountain is out here in Seattle, I think of her.

Sam and Maggie, skiers for life

Censuses!

So the 1950 Census will be out in just ten days. I'm very excited. This will have my dad and his parents in it, so long as they weren't actively on the move when it was taken in their neighborhood. I think I have the right ED, but I'll probably wait until info is at least a little searchable on Ancestry. Ancestry has a tool for looking up your family's Enumeration District (ED), if you know where they were living at the time. If that doesn't work for you, there is also Steve Morse's site, which can help you narrow your ED  down. 

However, the US isn't the only census to come out this year, and the Canadian 1931 census will come out next year. So here's what I've found out:

At this time, the 1921 UK Census is out. However, it is only available on Find My Past, only if you pay for an account, and even then, you have to pay for each image of the census you look at. So that one's not easily available, unless you live in the UK. My great-great grandfather Leon should be in that UK Census, so hopefully it will eventually be more widely available, though I doubt that will be this year.

The Danish 1950 Census is also available this year, and should be up sometime soon. I wasn't able to narrow down a date, so if you know one, feel free to let me know! I don't have anyone in my direct line who should still be in this Census, but some of my great-grandparents' siblings should be in it, at the very least.

the US 1950 Census comes out on April 1, and Ancestry and Family Search are already chomping at the bit to get the translated to data on their sites so that they are easily searchable on both sites. This one should, if I am very lucky, have my dad and his parents in it. Wish me luck!

The Canadian 1931 Census will be out next year. I don't know much about when or how this will be available, so all I can do is wait impatiently, as both my grandparents and their parents should be on this one. They were both supposed to be in the 1921 census, too, but I was never able to find the Jones family, so it is possible that they were in Wales at the time it was taken. Hopefully they'll be there this time.

And those are the ones I'm most looking forward to getting my hands on. 

Have you started prepping for the Census? Who are you looking forward to seeing on it?

Hansen (part 2) Placeline

Here's my second Hansen line. Which always confuses every genealogy program I have, because Oline Hansen married Holger Hansen, so she never had to change her maiden name, and the programs all assume I entered it wrong because I didn't change it. But while Holger was from Jutland (the part that connects to the continent of Europe), Oline was born nearly in the center of the large island that makes up much of the rest of Denmark, known as Sealand.

As always, Bold is places where the major events happened--birth, marriage, and death, and italics are other locations lived in for at least a year.

1. Oline Hansen

A. Cleveland, Ohio. After meeting Holger, Oline and he moved to Cleveland, married and settled there together. All three of their children were born there before her death in 1929. They lived in a Danish community, and her brother Hans Christian and several of Holger's brothers (and possibly cousins) also came to visit them or settled there. My grandmother told me they had a very good life there.

B. Chicago, Illinois. We believe that Oline came to Chicago immediately upon landing in the US. We don't know this for certain, but she did list her home as Chicago in an Ellis Island arrival record in 1917, so we know she lived there for a time. She may have started elsewhere, but as of right now, I have no absolute proof of any other locations in the US for her.

C. Copenhagen, Denmark. According to the few records I've found, and the family information, it appears that Oline moved with the family she worked for to the Copenhagen area, living in Frederiksberg (a neighborhood of Copenhagen) with them until she left to emigrate to America.

D. Fjenneslev, Denmark. This is where Oline was born. Her father had a farm inherited from his parents, where she and all her siblings were born. It's an interesting area, because there's a very famous church here, and stories about that church and the man who built it. However, they weren't well to do enough to go to that church, so they were baptised and confirmed in the Alsted church. 

One note here for the rest of this: Fjenneslev, Alsted, and Knudstrup are all small towns that my family lived right on the edge of, so while some of my records say one town or the other, I know that the family really didn't move from this area well back in time. For the rest of this record, all I can say for certain is that it looks as though the family really hadn't moved from this location in many generations.

2. Rasmus Hansen

A. Knudstrup, Denmark. Rasmus is listed as being born in Knudstrup, but I know his family farm was the same as the one he later inherited, so I'm leaving his birth and death location as Knudstrup, but I know he lived in Fjenneslev, just like his daughter. He lived on his family farm his whole life, married in the area twice, and all his children were born on that farm. And he died there as well.

3. Hans Nielsen

A. Knudstrup, Denmark. Like his son, Hans doesn't appear to have moved from the area from birth to death. I do have one census record that shows Hans and his wife with their son with him being the new farmer, and them being the retired farmers, so I know he inherited his father's farm, but I don't know exactly where they died, but I believe it was in this same general area.

4. Niels Andersen

We're now in the murkiest part of my family tree, and these are as likely to be wrong as right, though at this time, I'm inclined to feel these seem to be correct based on location and names.

A. Alsted, Denmark. Nearly all the locations I have for Niels are Alsted, with a few slight variations, so I presume he lived and died in the area. I do not know if he owned the farm that Hans Nielsen owned, though that is a strong possibility until I've managed to dig deeper.

5. Anders Hansen

A. Alsted, Denmark. Unlike the following generations until Oline, Anders is actually listed with different birth and death locations. While that means something or not, I felt it was worth marking. His marriage and death are marked as Alsted.

B. Fjenneslev, Denmark. Like my great-grandmother, he's marked as having been born at Fjenneslev. All the rest of his event locations are marked as Alsted.

6. Hans Nielsen

A. Alsted, Denmark. At this time, Alsted is the only location I have for him, so he probably lived and died in the area as well.

*

And that's everything for Oline's father's line. Fluffled out a little with the Knudstrup/Alsted/Fjenneslev issue, but otherwise it's quite small. Six places all together, and three of them are practically the same place.

I will say, if you know this line, I'd love to talk to you about what you know, particularly about the specifics of the farm, and each of these generations and where they lived.

52 Ancestors: Flowers - Tante Margrethe

So this one's a little bit of a tricky one. We have several flowers that mean something to our family, but nothing big, and so I was struggling a little to come up with anything. None of my female ancestors have flower names that I knew--until a Danish friend told me that the Danish queen Margrethe (the Danish version of Margaret) has a nickname--Daisy, due to her British roots. And that's when this one came to me. It's a tenuous connection, but I couldn't resist.

My dad's mother was Margaret. She went by Maggie. She was named Margaret for her father's aunt Margrethe, who helped him out when he first came to this country. I believe there are several Margarets in our family line because of her.

My three-times great aunt Margrethe (tante for those who speak Danish) was born in Denmark in 1873. She was her parent's sixth child. My great-great grandmother Else was her eldest sister. She married Isak Isaksen in 1897, and shortly after, they had their first child. They had three all told, two boys and a girl. Sometime after their daughter, their youngest child was born, Isak emigrated to the US. Margrethe and her children followed soon after. They stayed on Long Island, and so they were there for several of their family members to stay with as they emigrated as well. Margrethe lost her husband in 1958, but she lived more than ten years more before passing in 1970.

It is because of her that Holger, my great grandfather, was able to find his way in the New York area. And it's because of her family that I have as much information on Holger's mother side of the tree, as her daughter was the one to write up that side of my family tree for my grandmother and her sister. I know my grandmother felt very close to her tante Margrethe, who came to take care of them for a time after their mother died in 1929. She was obviously very close to her Tante.

Tante Margrethe and Onkel Isaksen

Tante Margrethe ca 1930 or so

Kresch Placeline

If you thought the previous one too short, this one is even shorter, at least in number of generations. Though there are more places in it. If only because my great grandmother moved around a lot once she left her home in Galicia. 

There are two major groups in the US who have problems tracking their ancestors. The first is African Americans, who for some reason can't track their ancestry easily before the mid 1800s. </sarcasm> The other is those of Jewish ancestry. Our reasons are different, and yet in some ways, far too similar to African American issues. People would rather hate and destroy us than acknowledge what has been done to us. Because of this, I don't know any generations before my great-great grandparents on either side of my grandfather's line. And I have little hope I will find more. But I keep looking. Just in case.

As always, bold is places with major events (Birth, Marriage, and Death), and italics is other locations where they lived for at least a year.

1. Dobra aka Dora Kresch Hillinger

A. Chicago, Illinois. This is where the Hillinger clan finally settled in the US, after nearly a decade of moving around the South. While her husband was not in Chicago when he passed, Dora lived here with most of her children until her death in 1969.

B. Little Rock, Arkansas. After a few years in Memphis, the Hillingers moved to Little Rock, where Dora worked at either a hospital or a school, or possibly both, as a cook in their kitchens. I'm not sure what prompted the move, but I do know they stayed here through my grandfather's time in high school before moving once more.

C. Memphis, Tennessee. After the Hillingers arrived in the US, they settled in Memphis, near where Dora's sister in law and her husband lived. They lived there for at least four years before moving on to another location in the American South.

D. Paris, France. The Hillinger family settled in Paris while Alex worked to get the money together to get the whole family to the US. They traveled from Le Havre to Ellis Island, where they landed, and the family remained in the US to this day.

E. Frankfurt, Germany. After World War I, Dora and at least one of her sisters moved to Frankfurt together. I have record of another of her sisters and also one of her brothers moving there as well, and that their mother moved there and was living there when she died. I don't know much about her pre-marriage life here, but I do know that at this time, there was a rising community of Jews in Frankfurt, and one of the last Mayors of Frankfurt before the rise of the Nazi party was also Jewish. It was a good place to be Jewish in Germany between the wars. 

So it was here she met my great grandfather, and here that they married. All six of their children were born in Frankfurt, and the older ones went to school here. Dora and Alex ran several businesses here, and her focus was on a cafe they owned. But with the rise of Nazi power, things became difficult for the Jews in Germany, and after the last of their businesses failed, her husband decided it would be safer if their family left the country. They had two options for family to go be near at the time. Since he had been kicked out of England, he went for the other option--the US, where three of his four siblings lived. So the family moved to Paris to be safe until such time as they could get a visa to the US, and could afford passage across the sea.

F. Czudek, Galicia (now Poland). This is where my great-grandmother was born. A small village in a country that no longer exists. Galicia was a country that was part of the Austrio Hungarian empire, and by the mid nineteenth century, it was a very poor country. Many Jewish communities had been settled there, and it was an area rife with pograms, as was true of most Jewish areas of Eastern Europe. It is a short way away from Rzeszow, which was a center of Jewish learning in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the first World War, it was absorbed into Poland and the Ukrane, depending on the part of Galicia. Cuzdek itself is now part of southern Poland.

I know very little about Dora's family's life there, but I can imagine what it was like, having grown up watching Fiddler on the Roof, because that's pretty much what it was like in most of Eastern Europe. What I know for certain is this. Shortly after the end of the first world war, there was a pogram here. I don't know for certain how Dora's family was affected, though I have a guess. And it was shortly after that, in 1919, that Dora and her sister left for Frankfurt.

2. Benzion Kresch

I really know very little about my great great grandfather. Just that he lived in and probably died in the village his children were born in. I'm not even sure he (or his wife) were born there.

A. Czudek, Galicia. This is the only location I am certain of for Benzion. I believe that all his children were born here, and my speculation is that the pogram I mentioned above either affected him so that he died, or that he was literally killed in the pogram. I have no proof. Just the mention that several Jews died in the attack, and that he was gone by the time my great-grandmother left Czudek. The only other thing I want to note here is that the cemetery he was likely laid to rest in was later plowed over by the gentiles in the area and used as pastureland. Upon reading that, never had I better understood African American anger. I could say a lot of angry things here, but I won't. I'll just let you imagine them.

*

That's it. That's all I have. Six locations. In fact, until a couple years ago, I didn't even know my great-grandmother's siblings' names. Now I have names, and even a couple of photos. I still know very little about this branch of my family, but I hope someday to know more.

52 Ancestors: Worship - The Huguenots

Upon seeing the prompt for this week, I struggled to decide what to write. Two things immediately came to mind. The first was my grandfather's line. My grandfather was born Jewish, and one of his grandfathers was a Rabbi--in the old country, possibly? I'm not entirely certain. But I talk about that side of my tree a lot, and so I think today I will focus on another group of people whose religion was used against them.

Before I begin, I have to say this is an unproven story I learned from my family. That one of my Welsh lines had connections to the Huguenots. I looked into it, googling the terms Welsh and Huguenot, and came across an article (which I have since lost) stating that there was a small group of Huguenots who settled in Wales and became known for their weaving. Which is what led me to believe that my Gabriels/Howells line was the one that was likely of Huguenot descent, as I knew that line had been weavers to a certain point. But I have also learned that proving Huguenot descent is not an easy thing, unless you manage to connect them to one of the Huguenots on different lists. Which I have yet to do. But I keep trying.

So for those who don't know who the Huguenots are, I'll offer a highly simplistic explanation. They were a group of protestants in Catholic France in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Catholic Church felt threatened by this group, leading to over a century of violence against Huguenots. Finally the Church convinced the French king to make any Protestant faith illegal. Huguenots had been fleeing the country for generations, and this was the final blow, causing those who could to flee the country.

If my family story is correct, it means we have some French ancestry. I don't know when our branch would have fled France, or whether the Welsh Huguenot weavers were actually my weavers, but I do know that my great-great grandfather's family were known for their weaving skill. For generations, it was how they made their money. I'm not entirely sure when that stopped being part of my direct line, though as technology advanced, people with those skills were replaced by factory-made cloth, so probably sometime about the beginning of the industrial revolution.

So here's the line as I have it, working back in time:

• My great-grandmother was Eliza (known as Bessie) Howells who was born in southern Wales in 1885 
• Her father was Gabriel Howells, born in northern Wales in 1849
• His father was Howell Gabriel, born in northern Wales in 1822
• His father was Gabriel Howel, born in northern Wales in 1794

Beyond this point, between myself and the extended Gabriel/Howells clan online who have been tracing their family tree, we do have two more generations back:

• Gabriel Howel's father we now have listed as having been born in 1766 in northern Wales
• And his father was Howel Gabriel, born in 1740.

I don't have a birth location for that last Howel, but it's still at least 60 years after the Huguenots fled France, so still well after the person who would have come from France. That means that if this is my Huguenot line, that they'd been in Wales for at least three generations by the time that Howel was born.

For me, the real curiosity of this family line is the naming tradition. While Wales is a patronymic country, meaning that children take on their father's name as their surname, that is not quite what my family did. For generations, the eldest son took on his father's name as his surname--but his siblings used their father's surname as their surname. It leads me to wonder if maybe this special naming tradition of switching back and forth between Gabriel and Howel as surnames has something to do with our Huguenot heritage. I have no proof of this, though, just a supposition. If anyone knows of a tradition like this, I'd love to hear about it.

Jones Placeline

Like the Hansens, I do have a handful of Jones lines, so I will clarify that this is my grandmother's father's line. Unfortunately, it doesn't go back far because it is not as well traced as the Howells line is, and tracing Jones family is like looking for a needle in the famed haystack. I will say here that I am amused that both of my grandfathers had super uncommon surnames, and both of my grandmothers have two of the most common European surnames. It's almost like someone did that on purpose...

As usual, Bold is Birth, Marriage, and Death locations, and italicized is any other locations they lived in for around a year or more.

1. Merle Tydfil Jones

A. Bellevue, Washington. My mother's family moved down to the Seattle area in 1960, and my grandmother lived in the Bellevue area until her death in 2012. So much of our family history was in the house they moved into shortly after moving to the area, including my parent's wedding party, my great-grandmother living with them for a time, and so much of my mom and her younger brother's childhood, as well as mine and my sister's.

B. Vancouver, BC. After Grandpa went to war, Grandma returned to Vancouver and lived with her parents there while he served. My uncle was born here. They moved to a suburb of Vancouver after grandpa returned to Vancouver, and all three of their other children were born there. They lived there until they moved to the US in 1960.

C. Truro, Nova Scotia. For a time, Grandma lived with Grandpa here while he trained to go overseas for the war. I am not sure how long they were here together, but I feel the need to include it because it was the beginning of their marriage to each other.

D. Vancouver, BC. Grandma and her three siblings were all born here, and lived here their whole childhood and young adult lives. None of them moved away from the area until after they were married, but they generally stayed near the Vancouver area even after they moved.

2. Daniel Thomas Jones

A. Vancouver, BC. I don't know exactly when Daniel arrived in Vancouver, but shortly after, he met my great-grandmother, Bessie. They married in 1911, and so he never went back home to Wales except to visit. They raised all four of their children here in the city. They celebrated their 50th anniversary with three of their four children and all their grandchildren in 1961, just three years before his death in 1964. 

B. Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Daniel was born here in 1882, the fourth of eight children. His parents ran the local post office, and he stayed here with his family until he and his friends decided to take a working trip to Canada, where they worked at farms to make money to travel across the country. When he reached Vancouver, he met and fell in love with Bessie, my great-grandmother.

3. Benjamin Jones

Here's where my knowledge fades. I have a picture of Benjamin and his wife with their daughters, but until I found some census records, I didn't even have all their childrens' names. I do have one story about one of their sons dying from pneumonia, but otherwise, my information is very minimal.

A. Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. Benjamin lived here with his wife and children until his death sometime between 1901, where I have him in the census and before 1920, which is when my grandmother and her family came to visit the family. I have all their children having been born here, including my great-grandfather, and I believe I have a census record showing him with his mother and a brother, but I have almost nothing else about how he came here, or who he came with.

B. Caio, Wales. This is the place I have recorded as Benjamin's birthplace. I looked it up, and it appears to be a mining area as well, so it's possible the family moved to Merthyr Tydfil because they were already part of the mining life. But I don't know why they moved, or when. Or even if his father came with them. All I know is that this is where he was born.

I do have a father for Benjamin, but at this time, I have nothing more than a name, David, and that not proven, so he will have to wait until I can prove more. So just five places for this one. Hopefully someday I'll be able to learn more about Benjamin's early life and his parents. 

If you have any more information about this family, I would love to know more about them. Feel free to leave a message, or even email me at elfflame at hotmail dot com.

52 Ancestors: Females - Karen (Kaja) Angell Bordewich

Females was so broad a topic, it took me a while to come up with an idea for this post, then one of my friends suggested I see if any of the females in my direct line had a March birthday, and that was how I came up with writing about Kaja Angell. She was the only one of all the close ancestors (within 8 generations) that had a March birthday, so she had to be the one, and I wasn't upset about that at all. She's been a favorite ancestor for a long time now, and has always been there in my written tree, even before I knew who she was, so I knew writing about her would be fun.

Here's what I know about Kaja: her full name was Karen Dorothea Angell, but she was known as Kaja. She was born March 18, 1835 in Rodoy, Nordland, Norway. I have been told she was an orphan, but at this time, I do not know if the parents I have listed for her are her natural parents, as while her listed father, Hans Christian Angell did die when she was ten, her mother, Richardine Klaeboe didn't die until Kaja was in her forties. Perhaps after her father died, the family struggled, so she was adopted into another family because her mother wasn't able to care for her three young children. Either that, or I have her mother's death date wrong. Definitely things I need to look into.

She married in 1859 at 24. Her husband, Hans Henrik Bordewich, was the son of a man with a great deal of power. I don't know much about their marriage, but I do have one wonderful story from the beginning of their life together. When she first joined the Bordewich household, they stayed with Hans's father, Johan. He was a man with a great deal of power, especially over his many children, and was used to being listened to. His wife had died thirteen years before, so his daughter had taken over her mother's duties, taking care of the household and the youngest children. Which meant she sat in the chair to her father's side as head of household. However, when Kaja joined the household, Johan insisted that Kaja take that place. The first night, knowing nothing about their household, she took the spot. But she soon learned what had happened, so the next night, she sat next to her husband at the other end of the table. Upon seeing his daughter sitting in her usual spot, Johan insisted that the two young women exchange places. Kaja, strong willed, told him no, that that was her sister-in-law's spot, and that she'd earned it, and she would sit near her husband, thank you very much. And that was that. I have a feeling I would really have loved to meet Kaja. She sounds like a fabulous lady. 

Kaja and Hans had ten children. Nearly all of them survived to adulthood, which is an incredibly uncommon thing in this time and place. As I said, I don't have a lot of stories about her life, but there is one child she had a particular connection to. Her fourth child was a boy they called Richard Angell. He was such an artistic child that he was given the chance to get schooling in painting and art. The extended family still has a few of his paintings, which we believe were gifted to the family because one of my uncles was named for him. Richard traveled to America as a young man to stay near his uncle, who had settled and made a good living there. He set up a photography business, and it is because of him that we have many photos of our family from that time. While in America, he met and married and he and his wife had a son. 

Then his uncle became American consul to Norway. Richard and his family joined his uncle as part of his household, and settled in Oslo with him. Unfortunately, in 1898, there was an influenza pandemic, and Richard got sick. Upon hearing of her son's illness, Kaja traveled from the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway to Oslo to help her daughter-in-law tend for her son while Richard was ill. Unfortunately, Richard died, and so Kaja stayed with her daughter in law in Oslo to help them both after her son's death. She died in Oslo in 1922 at the age of 87. Definitely a long-lived life. Definitely a lady I'm very glad to have in my family tree.