I haven't put up a post in a while for several reasons, but mainly because I haven't had much time on my hands lately. My mom came for a visit, my daughter was on winter break and I've been pondering the point of genealogy in general. So I decided to share my thoughts on the subject and see what some of my readers have to say on the subject. I am sure that this has crossed peoples' minds in the past during the course of their own research.

And you're going to have to excuse the messy thought process because I am just writing things down as they pop into my head. So if none of this makes sense to you - sorry :-)

I was thinking of a way to put all these ideas into some kind of structure and eventually decided to take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think we can safely skip the physiological and safety needs and take a look at love and belonging or in other words social needs.

I would venture to say that for some people genealogical research is a way to feel a deeper connection to their family, whether it be their immediate or extended family. That is certainly one of the reasons I started researching my family's history. Living so far away and not being in contact with relatives caused me to forget who's who and how we're all related. I don't know if it was an actual "need" but perhaps more of a curiosity and a way to stay connected to my past. I also wanted to be able to tell my daughters about my family at some point in their lives and I knew that without some sort of system I was going to forget a lot of people. By creating and sharing an online tree on Geni I've also managed to bring the rest of the family closer together, but that was not my original intention.

I am sure that most of the geneabloggers are fulfilling some sort of social need as well as getting their research out there for others to enjoy and potentially find a connection. And many have also taken to social networks to expand their reach and interactivity with others. Many researchers enjoy the social aspects of the various genealogical conferences, workshops and cruises as well. I've enjoyed this sort of interaction too, but I don't think this has been a leading driver for me. I would probably categorize it as a fun byproduct. This also brings up specific interests like old photos, ethnic background research or even military history.

I think we have to go higher up Maslow's pyramid. The next level is esteem.

I am certain many serious genealogists have a need to be respected by their peers and enjoy a sense of achievement when breaking down a brick wall. And then bragging about it. But once again, that is not the main reason I enjoy this hobby. So next and final step - Self-actualization.

I think the desire to know and understand our past is probably the main driver for genealogists. Where do I come from? How did I get here? What chain of coincidences and historical events came together to give me this life? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves as human beings from time to time. As genealogists, we try to answer those questions through systematic research.

But I think there's more past Maslow's pyramid. A lot more...

Some people just enjoy the historical aspect of it all and genealogy makes history a little more personal. If you can place one of your ancestors in a significant historical event, then you have a personal connection to it. I especially like this side of genealogy. That's probably why I enjoy reading biographies or general historical non-fiction about people and places.

But sometimes there are some flaws in this reasoning. Let me explain my thought process.

There are several levels to understanding your past. There's oral history that you hear from your parents, grand-parents and maybe great-grands. That will probably bring you back about 100 years. That's also where most of us will end up with old photos unless you have some rare items dating back to the 18th century, but those are few and far between. Then there are a few other research milestones.

My Jewish genealogy is probably going to end somewhere in the middle of the 18th century anyway. There aren't many records kept or left and most of my ancestors and their relatives perished in the Holocaust. Looking for descendants is a bit of an interest, but while finding a 4th cousin somewhere is great, it's not like we're going to be really close. I barely keep up with my 2nd cousins as it is.

On my wife's side there are a lot of long American lines that date back to colonial times, but eventually the all end up in Europe somewhere and that's where the research will end unless there is some noble or royalty and that's pretty much genealogical vanity. So we all know the origins of our ancestors after a short amount of research and that's that.

So is it the process that we like? Is it digging through archives and finding a clue that leads us to a "new" discovery? Well then we could do that sort of research for pretty much anyone, right? Because my 8th great-grands are so far removed from me personally that they might as well be strangers. Why don't we research strangers? Why don't we just randomly open up an old city directory, pick a name and research that person? Well, some of us do. But most won't want to invest time and money on complete strangers.

Some people love cemeteries. Some people love archives and old libraries. Some people love to travel to ancestral homelands or figure out an old plat from a recorded land deed. Some people want to find parallels in their past to their own lives.

Anyway, I've been rambling long enough. I think that for me personally, I have accomplished several things through genealogy:

1. I can now easily name pretty much all my living relatives out to my 2nd cousins.
2. I managed to get the family a little closer together.
3. I've been able to build a family tree for my daughters to enjoy later in life.
4. I've enjoyed the research process and connecting ancestors to historical events.
5. I virtually-met many interesting people who share my hobby.

I'm sure there's a lot more that I'm forgetting to add at the moment, but I think this post is long enough, don't you?

What's the point to your genealogy research? Let me know in the comments. I hope I gave you some food for thought.

I love Casefile Clues.

It is by far the most cost-effective, thought-provoking, research-organizing, genealogical tool for newbies like me. Michael John Neil does a fantastic job of laying out his research methodology in simple steps that anyone can understand.

You get a new casefile in your inbox every Monday and it's easy to read and understand. Then you can spend the rest of your week trying to emulate some of the methodologies in your own research.

The three things that stand out to me are:

1. Putting things in chronological order. I use RootsMagic for my genealogy database so whenever I view a person's entries I already see them in chronologcial order. But Michael usually creates a chronology for an entire family or several generations to see what else he should be looking for. That's been a real eye-opener for me.

2. Real Estate. There is a wealth of information in land records and other deeds that I never thought about before. If your ancestors were farmers then how did they get their land? What happened to the land when they moved or died? If they lived in the city, did they rent or own? These simple questions open up a lot of research avenues.

3. Have a system. At the end of every casefile there is a "what next?" section that highlights how to continue the research. There are always more places you can look for records and other clues. Did you check probate? Did you look at city directories? What about mailing lists and forums? There's always another place to look.

I am going to take some of the casefiles and apply them to my own research and write about it here. I hope you enjoy that.

But in the meantime, go sign up for Casefile Clues right now. You can also buy all the back issues. It's really a small investment for a truly fantastic resource.

As of the writing of this post Michael has a special for a set back issues (1-25) and a year's subscription for only $27.50 - That's only 35 cent per issue!

footnoteMaven has tasked us once again with finding something unique to share with our readers: "It is the holiday season and a time for giving. So give Smile readers the gift of sharing, sharing a family photograph. It can be a gift given or received, it can be the gift of talent, it can be the gift of having the photograph itself. The interpretation of gift is yours. Admission is free with every photograph!"

I decided to focus on family pictures and look for the oldest ones I have. As usual I will have two submissions, one for my ancestors and one for my wife's.

The Smorgonski Family - Dolhinov, Poland (about 1932)



I've written about this picture before, but thought it was worth displaying again. This is my great-grandfather and his family (without the oldest sister, Hanna, who was probably in Israel by this time). Everyone in the picture except for the top row of older siblings perished in the holocaust. They were murdered by the Polish villagers in their town of Dolhinov by being herded into a barn that was then set on fire.

Top row (left to right): Zipora (my grandmother), Shlomo and Pesia
Bottom row (left to right): Ida (Ita), Henia Segalchik, Joseph Haim, Avraham Smorgonski and Haya.

Hanna, Zipora and Pesia were the daughters of Avraham Smorgonski and Ester Segalchik. When Ester died, Avraham married her sister Henia and they had Shlomo, Ida, Haya and Joseph Haim.

I am not sure where this photo was taken or who saved it. Since The three oldest sisters left Poland with the Jewish youth movement before WWII, I suppose one of them brought it with her.

The Rightmire Family - Parsons, West Virginia (about 1906)



This is the the family of Thomas Ward Rightmire and Edith Mae Conley, my wife 2nd-great-grandparents. The family lived in Parson, West Virginia and from census records I suspect the were tobacco farmers. In the 1900 Census the three oldest children are listed as having an occupation of Stogie Rollers.

I believe this photo was taken after 1906 which is the year that Pearl Alta Rightmire was married and left the household to live with her husband Saul Isaac Hytowitz in Pittsburgh. I still need to figure out how the son of Jewish/Russian immigrants who lives in Pittsburgh married a girl from West Virginia, who was definitely not Jewish. But that's a story for another post.

This photo is on a postcard, which probably will give me more clues. In it we see Thomas and Edith, the parents, as well as their three sons, Myron W. Rightmire, Dale Mannington Rightmire and Otto Kent Rightmire. It is the oldest family photo I have on my wife's side of the family.

When I started researching our family history I thought the US Census was the best source of information out there. Little did I know that it is full of mistakes, missing info, duplicates and some of the weirdest spelling variations possible. In fact, sometimes the Census can leave you scratching your head more times than it will leave you smiling.

So here's an interesting story. My wife's Uncle Glenn met a woman in Florida that turned out to have the same maiden name as his original last name, Hytowitz. This is a fairly uncommon name and many of the Hytowitz's have changed their name at one point or another to Hyde. So needless to say, they were very surprised to find each other. They had no idea if there was a family connection between them or not (and we still don't know).

I got a message on Geni.com from this woman the other day where she told me that he grandfather had a son, who was not listed on our tree for some reason. She wanted to know how to add him and his wife as well as their daughter, Jacqueline Hyde, who was a Hollywood actress and had roles in Woody Allen and Sidney Polack movies amongst several other roles. I might write another post just about her and using media sources to find out about recent relatives.

I was confused as to why her parents were not in our tree. My early Hytowitz research through the US Census was pretty exhaustive and I managed to scrape together several families and even connect some of them. But Phillip Hytowitz and Ruth Peller were missing. Until I searched for Ruth by herself.

When I found Ruth things started to fall into place. Here is the 1930 US Census for this family:



Jacob Peller owned the house at 708 Greene Avenue in Brooklyn, New York. The home was valued at $15,000 and he had 3 other families paying him rent to live there. Must have been a big house to hold 14 people in it. The shenanigans start when you see that Walther and Ruth Hytowitz are listed at the bottom of the household. He is 21 and she is 19 and they have been married for 2 years.

Originally, I had no way to connect this Walther Hytowitz to any of the other families I had found in previous Census years. So I had him listed as a separate family. He is listed as being born in New York State, with both his parents from Russia. So I just lumped him under the Russian Hytowitz generic names I used for all the families that I could not connect yet.

But if you look three rows above Walther Hytowitz, you see another Walther. This is Walther Peller, the son of Jacob Peller. Could it be that son and son-in-law were mixed up when the enumerator wrote down the names? Since we don't know who provided the information, could it be that one of the other 14 people in this house gave erroneous information? The only reason I know that the name Walther is wrong is that a living relative told me about her Uncle Phillip and Aunt Ruth.

So I tried to find out where Phillip was in the 1920 and 1910 Census. Finding them in 1910 was tough because Ancestry.com had a transcription of Hertowich, which I updated to a 'variation' of Hytowitz. The 1910 Census lists Phillip as being 4 months old. The names of his older sister and parents match the 1930 Census as well as all other information.

1920 was even harder and I eventually tried to use the enumeration district numbers and went page by page to look for this family. Eventually I tried a different approach. I entered just the first names and left the last name blank. There are a lot of Samuels married to Sadies who lived in Brooklyn and were born around 1883! I then decided to search for the children and entered the oldest child, Lena, along with the first names of her parents. Bingo!



Seriously? The name in the index is Sam Heckowitz with a correction to Sam Herkowetz. How was I supposed to find them? Anyway, all the children are there including Phillip who is now 10 years old.

Oh and thank you very much mister enumerator for barely pressing down when you wrote. It is so hard to read what is written, no wonder there were so many mistakes.

So to recap, this family lived in three different places in 1910, 1920 and 1930. And their names were Hertowich, Heckowitz and finally Hytowitz. The were not around in the 1900 Census because the in 1920 it says the immigrated in 1904.

And that in fact is the biggest find of all. Because now I can check immigration documents and try to find out where Samuel came from and maybe I can find out who his parents were. That might connect some of the Hytowitz families I am trying to find common ancestors for. But that's a story for another post.

Well, not really. But my wife is. Sort of. Let me explain.

I've written several times about getting my whole family on Geni.com and how I have discovered many distant lost cousins and branches of our family through this online family tree. As part of my blog subscriptions I also check out their RSS feed from time to time. Lately, it has been reduced to downtime announcements and even worse - the dreaded "profile of the day." So I usually skip those.

But today the profiles are of the infamous Kardashian sisters: Kim, Kourtney and Khloe. Sometimes when I see a name I recognize I'll click the link, go to the profile and then click the "How are you related" button. So I know I am not related to William Shakespeare, for example.

But I am related to the Kardashian sisters. Well, my wife is. Sort of. And if you can figure out what the connection is, well, good for you. This is how it says I am related to Kim Kardashian:

Randy over at Genea-Musings has another great Saturday Night Genealogy Fun challenge for us tonight:

1. Who is your MRUA - your Most Recent Unknown Ancestor? This is the person with the lowest number in your Pedigree Chart or Ahnentafel List that you have not identified a last name for, or a first name if you know a surname but not a first name.
2. Have you looked at your research files for this unknown person recently? Why don't you scan it again just to see if there's something you have missed?
3. What online or offline resources might you search that might help identify your MRUA?
4. Tell us about him or her, and your answers to 2) and 3) above, in a blog post, in a comment to this post, or a comment on Facebook or some other social networking site.

As usual I will split this into my ancestry and then my wife's.

My MRUAs are half of my eight 2nd-great-grandmothers (no maiden names):
21. Hanna Minka Smorgonski
23. Ita Segalchik
29. Sarah Zinberg
31. Miriam Benditovich

For the first two, on my father's side, I only have my sister's roots project family tree as well as Yad-Vashem pages of testimony for their children, listing them as the mothers. I have not been able to track down any other information from JewishGen or family members about these two women.
The other two are on my mother's side and all I have for them is oral history from my grandmother. Both of them were her grandmothers, but she can not recall their maiden names. I suppose I could try my grandmother's brother, but since he is younger I don't think he will be able to help me either.

On my wife's side, I was surprised to find that her MRUA is also her 2nd-great-grandmother, Maria Kearney (also number 31 with maiden name unknown). This is obviously due to me not doing enough research on this branch. Here's what I know about her:

She was born in Ireland in January 1843 and immigrated to the US in 1847 at the age of 4. She married Thomas Kearney (born 1840, Ireland) about 1868 and had 4 they had at least 4 children: Thomas Jr. (born April 1876), James (born July 1878), Mary (born May 1880) and Margaret T. (born 27 Dec 1882). Most of this basic information was found in an interview done in 2000 with Agnes Auth, who was her granddaughter. I also found some of the family in the US Census, but it's obvious to me that with a little digging I will be able to find a lot more information about Maria.

The difference in information about my side versus my wife's is staggering. Especially because my wife's ancestors have been in the US for centuries and almost every line is well documented. I mean, if I pull up my pedigree chart, I have only 9 out of 32 people in my 6 generation chart and most of those are unconfirmed first name only ancestors. My wife, on the other hand, is only missing 8. I have done some basic research on some of her branches and they easily go back to early the 1600's colonial settlements. I also know she is descended of several Revolutionary War patriots. The next challenge is documenting all this properly and citing all sources correctly. That will take a very long time.

I just finished reading the latest Dan Brown novel "The Lost Symbol" and wanted to share my thoughts. I've read all of Dan Brown's novels so far and I have to say this one is pretty good. There were definitely some twist and turns that I kind of expected as well as some that were a little surprising. I won't give anything away, but I think intelligent readers will figure most of it out pretty easily.

What was interesting to me was that the whole plot takes place in a limited geographical location and over a very short time period. This is a testament to Brown's writing ability because the characters are very well developed and you still get sucked into the plot easily. I also had a feeling that he wrote the book almost like a screenplay, I guess that would make it easy to eventually make this into a movie at some point in the near future.

I love how you never know what's real and what's fiction in Brown's books. Although he mentions that all locations are real, you still have a strange feeling that some of it has to be fiction. Could these images and places actually exist and be out there in plain sight for all to see? I guess so.

This novel revolves around the Masonry and Freemasons. I've somehow always been aware of this fraternal group, but never gave them a lot of thought. Just a bunch of guys in aprons sitting around and talking about religion, right? Well, not according to this book or any of the numerous conspiracy theories out there. You can find a lot of information (and mis-information) out there these days. You just have to Google it.

While scanning some cemetery photos a couple of weeks ago I noticed that my wife's 2nd-great grandfather's headstone had a Masonic symbol on it:

I then went to check out his obituary:

Atlanta Constitution - 1/12/1910 - Rev. Milton B. Tuggle died at a private sanitarium yesterday afternoon. He lived at 17 Ashland Avenue. He is survived by his wife and five children, Mrs. Mary King, Mrs. Vining, Dave G. Vining, Mrs. Princey Mines and Paul L. Tuggle. The funeral will be at 2:30 pm from Barclay & Brandon's chapel, the Gate City lodge, No 2, Masons, being in charge. Interment will be in Oakland Cemetery.

So I did a quick Google search for Gate City Lodge, No 2 and found out they actually have a website and a blog. You can navigate those pages and see who the current members are as well as the history of the lodge and more. Apparently they have been in the news lately for filing a civil suit against the Grand Lodge of Georgia:

The Grand Lodge of Georgia Free and Accepted Masons, a fraternal organization, is being sued by an Atlanta chapter and its senior officer who say the group’s state leaders are trying to disband the local affiliate because it accepted a black man as a member.

You can read more about that here. Anyway, they withdrew their suit and all is well I guess.

I also found a contact email and sent them an email to see if they have any information about Milton Tuggle that they could share. I have never gone down this path before and not sure where it will lead just yet, but I hope I can get some more information this way.

Do you have any Masons in your tree? Any interesting stories or experiences? Let me know in the comments.