I haven't submitted a post to a carnival in a while, but this one is too good to pass. I actually have three stories, but have photos for two so far (I know the third exists but I don't know where it's hiding). This is my submission to the 78th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy: Pony Pictures.
1. The Ponies in Los Angeles
This is a funny one because it is one of my daughter's favorite bedtime stories. On our second family trip to the US in 1982, we did the west coast tour and also visited Mexico. When we were in LA, my mom's cousin took us pony riding. I am not sure where it was exactly.
The ponies rode around an elliptical track and every 5 minutes or so they would be corralled back and new riders would get their turn. While standing in line, my sister and I started eying the ponies we wanted to ride. My sister wanted the slow, mellow pony, who calmly strolled around the track. I obviously wanted the fastest one.
So we get our turn and get on the ponies we wanted. But as soon as the ponies were released, my sister's shot out of the gate like he was at the derby. Mine on the other hand decided to take a bit if a break:
Yes, those are real tears on my poor sister's face. For 5 minutes she yelled and screamed for that pony to stop, which he didn't.
I just found out that we have an old home video that my parents converted to VHS, so now I am waiting for my copy on DVD.
2. The Mule in West Virginia
I love this photo. According to my wife's uncle, Glenn:
This was taken in Parsons, WV, Summer of 1950 at a family reunion at a second cousin's house. Jackie (left) and Lois (right) standing, Bunny (back) and I (front) on the mule. Grandma was there too, but she got her hand caught in the door of my dad's new 1950 Mercury just before this picture was taken. We were up near Black Water Falls. Somewhere out there is another photo with Jackie on the mule, taken at the same time.
Don't worry, I asked for more details and will share when I get them.
UPDATE: More from Uncle Glenn - This was at a Rightmire great-aunt's home. The Aunt we visited lived very basically in the country with a mule for a work, as a beast of burden and a hand pump well for water in the back of her home. She made us kids eat carrots and other things she grew in her garden. I know it was very near Black Water Falls because we went to the Falls that day and walked in the back water and did a swing bridge. This was just before we moved to Ft. Lauderdale later that year in Nov. 1950.
3. The Love Story
I've heard the following story in several variations, but this is the one that my sister wrote in her roots project:
This is the story about how my grandparents met. Grandpa managed a store in Tashkent and had a business relationship with Grandma's father. He would always tell him about his daughter but refused to let them meet because he said my grandfather was a punk. They met on accident when he spotted her walking with her father one day. Her father tried to avoid their introduction by trying to go down a small alley but because my Grandpa was riding his horse he quickly caught up to them and that's how they met. It was love at first sight and a year later they were married.
Somewhere, there's a photo of my grandmother on a horse, which I need to find and post. But I love this story and had to include it in this post.
I pretty much missed it, but this blog turned one a couple of days ago. I can't believe I've been at this for a year now. In the past year I've had over 4,300 visits from about 3,500 unique visitors from 91 countries. Many of the more popular posts had to do with free templates and reviews I did of Geni and MyHeritage. So instead of listing the most viewed pages I think a more significant list would be the posts that meant most to me during my first year as an amateur genealogy nut:
- My grandfather had a twin brother nobody knew about!
- My second daughter was born and we named her after my great grandmother.
- My mother brought a lot of old photos and documents on one of her visits.
- I found out why City Directories are so great.
- I took my family on a local ancestors field trip.
- I translated a chapter from the Dolhinov Yizkor Book about my great-grand-uncle.
- I wrote about the annihilation of my Dombek line in the Holocaust.
- I am still trying to figure out who Margret Bishop/McElrath really was. I now know that her maiden name may have been Margret Timmons.
I look forward to many more years of exciting research and findings. Thanks for reading.
Bella Brannon Dekel was born on the afternoon of April 7th. I wrote a little bit about her name on my genealogy blog (link here), but we haven't gotten around to posting any pictures yet. So here's a quick photo dump for everyone to enjoy.
Still in the OR, right after the nurses cleaned her up:
In the nursery, getting her first bath:
Kiki has been amazing with Bella and loves to hold her and comfort her:
Since it was Passover, we all got matching seder-plate shirts and a onesie for Bella:
My three girls:
Me and my babies:
Getting ready to go home:
First night at home, girls in matching pajamas:
So as you can understand we've been home for a couple of days and so far I can tell you that this kid is certainly a night owl. She only cries when she is hungry or when she needs her diapers changed, which is pretty much every 15 minutes. She makes the funniest grunts and squeaks when she sleeps and is a very strong baby. She lifts her head up and if she's got her arms or legs bent, good luck trying to stretch them out (for putting on sleeves or diapers). The hospital photographer was shocked when she saw here hold her head up at 3 days.
I can honestly say that I don't remember any of this from when Kiki was born. Which means that no matter what happens, we're all going to be fine in the end, right? Anyway, more pictures later. I am going to try to take a nap.
Yesterday afternoon we were blessed with another beautiful baby girl. We decided to call her Bella Brannon Dekel which is a great combination of her ancestry and a very cool name. My wife's maiden name is Brannon and that lineage can be traced back 11 generations. The Dekel family name is relatively new and was changed from my father's Kilchevsky (Kielczewski) by his father. But the name Bella is a whole other story.
Bella "Beile" Kreplak was my great-grandmother. I have very little information about her and most of it is from oral interviews and a single page of testimony in the Yad Vashem Database. Here is what I know (treat this is unsourced information, but it's as good as I can get right now):
Bella was born in Warsaw about 1884 to Avram Kreplak and Dobe Jablonka. She was one of 8 children in her family (Moshe, Bella, Yossel, Rivka, Haya, Esther, Meir & Noeh). She married Hanoch Meir "Heynoch" Dombek probably in Warsaw before 1905 (when her first child was born). Heynoch and Beile had 9 children and lived at 16 Woloska Street in Warsaw before the Holocaust. Their children were Moshe Mordechai, Zipora "Feige", Tamar "Tana", Hava, Michael Haim "Misha" (my grandfather), Leah, Arieh "Leib", Haya & Rivka.
Bella, her husband and 8 of 9 children perished in the holocaust (the 9th child was my grandfather who escaped east to Russia). I don't know their exact fate, but from bits and pieces of what I remember hearing, they died of Typhus in the Warsaw Ghetto. I am sure that if I dig in the Polish Archives I will be able to find more information, but that will have to wait for now. It is assumed that Bella died in 1943.
The translated page of testimony about Bella from Yad Vashem reads as follows:
Detail text:
Bela Dombek was born in Warsaw in 1884. Prior to WWII she lived in Warsaw, Poland. During the war she was in Warsaw, Poland. Bela perished in 1943 in Warsaw, Poland. This information is based on a Page of Testimony (displayed on left) submitted on 26-Jun-1955 by Rivka Geiger.
Full Record Details for Dombek Bela
Source Pages of Testimony
Last Name DOMBEK
First Name* BELA
Sex Female
Date of Birth 1884
Place of Birth WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Name of 1st Child LEIB
Date of Birth of 1st Child 1928
Name of 2nd Child* LEA
Date of Birth of 2nd Child 1926
Name of 3rd Child KHAIA
Date of Birth of 3rd Child 1930
Permanent residence WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Place during the war WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Place of Death WARSAW,WARSZAWA,WARSZAWA,POLAND
Date of Death 1943
Type of material Page of Testimony
Submitter's Last Name* GEIGER
Submitter's First Name RIVKA
Registration date 26/06/1955
* Indicates an automatic Translation From Hebrew
Detail comments:
http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_FL/.cmd/acd/.ar/sa.portlet.VictimDetailsSubmitAction/.c/6_0_9D/.ce/7_0_V9/.p/5_0_P1/.d/2?victim_details_id=1604044&victim_details_name=++Bela&q1=53EyGfyZ998%3D&q2=nCb0IKBT2lJyrAw9hs3KZKtWDxcmsb7P&q3=VlWlwPDAqiE%3D&q4=VlWlwPDAqiE%3D&q5=5%2BnqSfv9YJY%3D&q6=rFcgqeCcjDU%3D&q7=bxVfqQaN%2Ft%2BRpyXBct1qE2j6IQqmeLWD&frm1_npage=4#7_0_V9
Update: My mother read this post and pointed out that the dates above are incorrect. She is completely right about that, because these birth years do not make much sense. But you have to remember a few things about Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony - Most of them were filled out a decade or two after people left Europe and not always by very close relatives. These sources should be treated carefully because they may contain mistakes. For Example, the same submitter filled out a page (actually two) about my own grandfather, who was alive at the time. Still, for anyone researching Jewish Genealogy, the Yad Vashem database is a must. Thanks for the comment Mom!
Had it not been for my genealogy research and newly found obsession with family history we would probably never have come up with the name Bella. I am honored and proud to be able to name my youngest daughter after my great grandmother. Two Bellas - 5 generations apart.
Randy Seaver always comes up with something fun to do on Saturday nights. This time it's a list of ten questions for a quick genealogical confession:
1. When did you start genealogy research? (2008 - I am a true newbie but already have a database of almost 10K names. Obviously most are unsourced and not verified - there's a lot of work to do)
2. Why did you start doing research? (I took my daughter on a vacation to Israel and read through a roots project that my sister did over 20 years ago. I always regreted not knowing more about my family history. I thought it would be great if I could put together a family tree for my kid(s) that consisted of both sides of the family. Little did I know that my wife's side would turn out to be GIGANTIC)
3. What was your first big success in research? (Figuring out all the amazing resources out there and using them to build a 16-generation lineage for my kids)
4. What is your biggest genealogy regret? (My grandparents NEVER talked to me about their lives and families before the escaped from Europe. I grew up knowing that everyone was killed by the nazis and I never asked more questions. I wish I had asked, especially on my Dombek side. I plan to interview my grandmother in depth on my next visit)
5. What are you best known for in the genealogy world? (I believe I am a complete unknown at this point)
6. What is your professional status in genealogy? (Not certified but perhaps certifiable. Maybe one day, but I don't see this as a career options for the next couple of decades. I like talking about it with friends and getting them interested)
7. What is your biggest genealogy achievement? (Finding a big network of cousins on both sides and getting them to talk to each other, either after many years of losing touch or never even knowing they existed)
8. What is the most FUN you've had doing genealogy? (Taking my family on a genealogical field trip through the city of Atlanta, tracing my wife's ancestors and seeing the places they lived. I wrote about it in this post)
9. What is your favorite genealogy how-to book? (I don't really read the how-to variety of books. But I am very happy that genealogy has turned me back on to the historical non-fiction genre. Currently reading "The Lost" and on deck are "Defiance" and "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee")
10. What notable genealogist would you like to meet someday? (Randy Seaver, Schelly Talalay Dardashti, Deborah Lipstadt and many others)
Well that's it for my confession. Thanks again for the challenging questions, Randy!
My mother-in-law rented a house in the north Georgia mountains in the amazing serene and beautiful community of Big Canoe. Uncle Glenn and Aunt Jane joined us from Florida and we spent a terrific long Thanksgiving weekend in front of the fireplace, rubbing our full bellies.
On the day we arrived, I looked through the bookcase in the living room and found a booked titled "Wolfscratch Wilderness : A Backward Walk in Time in an Old North Georgia Settlement
But what truly amazed me are the chronicles of the families who lived here. The Potts, Disharoon, Cox, Cowart, Sanderlin, Pettit, Fields, Gaddis, Vandiver, Fouts, Glass, Brooks, Heath, Hendrix, Blackwell, McElroy, Wigington, Whitley, Byess and Tate families either won land in lotteries or acquired some of this rough terrain and lived here through cold winters, poverty, moonshining, wars, infant and childbirth mortality and other excruciating hardships. The family chapters include testimonials from living family members and amazing photographs of these tough mountain people.
The chapters read very easily and are compiled from census information, court and land records, family bibles, letters and interviews. The author did a terrific job of researching the family histories and added some literary glue around them. There are lots of details and dialogues as well as several letters written by the family members and descendants. I will probably put up a couple of interesting photos that caught my eye, like the family that always took a picture with a big Bible, the girl with her pet bunnies or the moonshiners playing cards.
We also spent a day in Dahlonega, the gold capital of Georgia, which was a short drive away. We visited the gold museum and went panning for gold in one of the nearby mines. I was fascinated by it all and thoroughly enjoyed our day. In the town square were several interesting stores with antiques and other memorabilia from the region. I was on the lookout for a bookstore I read about in a travel guide that promised to have genealogy books, native American literature, old flags and maps. But it had closed down about three years ago and nobody knows where the owner went. The only other store that had antique books was more on the literary side. I did see a couple of extremely expensive books dating back to 1700's including a 3-volume English Baronage from the early 1800's and a couple of old map books. I was kind of upset that these were not in a library somewhere but I guess the store owner has to make a profit somehow, right?
The most expensive book I saw at the store was a 1st edition, 1st print 'Gone with the Wind' with an original letter by Margaret Mitchell. Price? Almost $11,000. Good luck selling that one.
So to sum it up, we had a very relaxing and fun-filled Thanksgiving weekend. Maybe we'll turn it into a family tradition?
One of the many reasons I started this blog was to get some of the family names out into cyberspace and see who might find their way here. I just got a comment on one of my previous posts from my third cousin once removed who lives in Argentina. He was doing some Google searches on his surname and found the post where I had mapped out the area where our ancestors were from in Poland. He remembers his grandfather was from Ostrow Mazoweicka.
Before I started on this journey I had no idea that I had any relatives in that part of the world but after doing some research on Geni.com we have managed to connect many cousins and create a very big family tree.
So Ernesto Kreplak, if you read this post, please send me an e-mail to adekel (at) bellsouth (dot) net. I will invite you to join the Geni tree and connect to everyone who's on there already.
Thanks,
Amir
Well, yes. But this one is a little different. This one is about my past.
On my last trip to Israel, while showing my daughter some old photo albums, I ran into my sister's Dari family roots project that she did for her bnei-mitzvah year at grade school. I was fascinated by all the details and photos in it that I had forgotten about over the years and then all of a sudden I got all nostalgic about my family and my ancestry. I had heard about genealogy before but had never really looked into it and so, this seemed like a good time to try my hand at it.
There are several reasons why I decided to start on this quest:
1) My family had been almost completely wiped off the face of the earth by the holocaust. On my maternal grandfather's side there were only a handful of living relatives. I feel like this is one way for generations to follow to be able to remember and try to comprehend what happened.
2) My wife's ancestry is so different from mine and there are so many resources to go through and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Her mother started a genealogy project for her on her 30th birthday and that was a great source of information for me to start with.
3) I want my daughter (and any future children) to be able to have a source to understand their heritage and history.
4) I want all our family members to have a chance to learn from my experiences.
What I intend to write about is my quest to uncover the past and try to reach every piece of available data out there to get the most complete picture possible. I will post my thoughts, my discoveries, my roadblocks, interesting stories, anecdotes and tidbits.
I am a true beginner and I am sure I have a lot to learn about the field of genealogy, but I have definitely been bitten by the bug and I am truly enjoying trying to solve this historical puzzle step by step. I will also sometimes ask for help and see if the answers come back from the ether.
I hope you enjoy this blog, whether you are a family member, friend, fellow genealogist or just a random reader. You can always leave a comment or send me an e-mail to adekel@bellsouth.net if you have a private message. I do intend to list people's names on this blog, but I will omit first names of living relatives to protect their privacy.
I called this blog 'I Dream of Genea(logy)' because once you immerse yourself in your own history, it will probably invade your dreams.
