In honor of St. Patrick's Day...

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

Well, you can just tell by looking at your mom that you've got a bit of the Irish in ya.  Lucky girls!  Where does all that fabulous Irishness come from? Well, let's see. Where to start. My grandmother and your great-grandma (Grandma Dorothy's mom) was named Margaret Mary Sweeney (you don't get more Irish than that!).  She was born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1924.  She died when I was twelve, but I remember her vividly. 

Her mom and dad, Frank Sweeney and Isabelle McGoldrick, were both born in Nebraska in the late 1890s.  Frank's parents, Thomas Sweeney and Margaret Hefferman, were born in Illinois and Isabelle's parents, Peter McGoldrick and Johana (last name unknown) were born in New York and Illinois respectively. One more generation back and you find a whole lot of ancestors that emigrated from Ireland during or just after the Great Famine.

I like the story of Peter McGoldrick. His father, Thomas, came to Canada in 1850 or so and moved down into upstate New York, where he married Margaret Ann Loftus (another Irish gal) in Highmarket, Lewis County . Around 1880, the family moved to Scranton, Pennsylvania (where lots of Irish immigrants lived), I assume to work the coal mines.  Thomas and Margaret, in good Irish Catholic fashion, had 13 children. Peter, your great-great-grandfather, worked for a while as a slate picker in the coal mines when he was young, but he got out of Scranton around 1890 or so and moved to Omaha, where he established himself as a grocer. A step up, I would say! Good for him.  If I have learned one thing from this genealogy business it is that your ancestors were mostly not afraid to head off west in search of better things. I am afraid you are as far west as this land will take you, but maybe you don't have to be so literal about it.  Go West in your minds and spirits.

Your Grandpa James (my dad) has also imparted some good Irish genes to you.  His grandmother was a woman named Ellen Marnin. Ellen's father, Michael, was born in Ireland in 1820. Ellen's mother, Ellen Hearn, was born in Fermanaugh, Ireland in 1834.

There's more, but I think you get the point.  Like it or not, the Irish is runnin through your blood.  Enjoy!  You can always use it to excuse your wild side. Just say, "It's the Irish in me."  Everybody will understand.

Love,
Mom

Ancestor(s) of the Week: Great-Grandfather Saul White

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

I posted a childhood photograph of your great grandfather, Saul White, a few days ago. Let me tell you a little more about him. I never met Saul, so all I have to go on is what I have heard about him and the bits I was able to piece together from research. Your dad and Grandma Linda can fill out these bits and pieces and give you a better sense of who he really was. But, let me tell you what I know.

Saul Witkievicz was born in 1908 in Kolno, Poland. Kolno is in Northeastern Poland in the the Podlaskie Province.


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You can read a bit more about the Kolno shtetl here.  Saul's father was Efraim Witkievicz and his mother was Chava Bachrach. Efraim, I think, was from Kolno (there were quite a few Witkieviczes in Kolno at the time) and his mother and father were Velvel and Sara (whose maiden name may have been Borkowski). Efraim's grandfather (Velvel's father) was named David Witkievicz.

Here is Velvel and Sara:

These are Saul's grandparents (maybe David Witkievicz and his wife):

Chava, Saul's mother, was from a town called Grajewo, which was only 50 kilometers from Kolno. I know a little about Chava, like that she came from a long line of rabbis. Chava's grandfather was Rabbi Aryeh Leib Bachrach (the Rabbi of Grajewo) and the rabbis in the family go back generations. The Bachrach genealogy is pretty interesting and well-developed and I will share that with you some other time.  

Now, Saul's father, Efraim, died young (in his late thirties). It looks like Saul was only about 3 years old when Ephraim died.  This would explain the absence of Efraim in the photograph of the Witkiewicz family.  I assume from that ages of the children that the photograph was take shortly after Efraim's death. Saul and his siblings were raised in Kolno by Chava, who, according to Saul's oral history transcript, made a living running a shop and a laundry business. Saul remembered the barrells of pickles in the family shop, but he did not seem to remember too many details of life in Kolno (or, at least, many he was willing to share in his oral history interview). I think Chava must have been a strong woman to have raised 5 kids on her own back then.

In 1915, Henrietta, Saul's oldest sister, left for America. She was sent to live with Efraim's sister, Nellie, who had come to America back in the 1890s, married Morris Diamond, and settled in Buffalo, New York. The rest of Saul's immediate family, including Saul himself, came to America in 1920-1921 and settled in Buffalo briefly before making their way to New York City.

So, that's a little about your great-grandfather. There is more to tell.  Stay tuned.

Love,

Mom

White (Witkievicz) family photo

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

I know, I know. I have been slacking on the blog here. But the research into your family tree continues and I have lots more information to share with  you. Let's start with this lovely photograph of your great-grandfather Papa Saul as a child. He is second from the right. Also pictured here are Saul's mother, Chava, his sisters, Henrietta, Faye, and Hilda and his brother, William. Saul came to the United States from his home in Kolno, Poland in 1920 or so.  Henrietta had arrived 5 years earlier and stayed with Saul's paternal aunt, Nellie Diamond, in Buffalo.  I borrowed this photograph from your great-grandmother, Mama Ruth.

More soon.

Love, 

Mom

Digging for witches...

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

Genealogy is sure a strange thing.  In the course of researching your family tree, I have discovered these things called "heritage societies." These include the well-known Daughters of the American Revolution but also lesser known groups like the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, the Jamestowne Society, the Ladies of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Order of Descendants of Ancient Planters, the Society of the Descendants of the Founders of Hartford, and (my personal favorite) the Associated Daughters of Early American Witches.  I really hope I find a woman accused of witchcraft among our ancestors.  I would join that society in a heartbeat!

But mostly I find myself wondering about these societies and about the purpose of doing genealogy. I have found in your tree ancestors that founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony and no less than four(!) Ancient Planters of Virginia.  Don't know what an ancient planter is?  Go here: http://www.ancientplanters.org/about.htm . There are also men who fought in the Revolutionary War.  So, technically we could apply to join many of these heritage societies.  But, this is where the problem comes in.  I really don't care about the Ancient Planters in your tree any more than I care about the Irish slate picker in Scranton, PA in 1890 or the Jewish merchants in nineteenth-century San Francisco. Its all good to me. It is all part of your glorious story.  I read somewhere that there is such a thing as a prestigious family tree and it was suggested that this prestige, at least in American circles, derives from early colonial ancestors. I think that is weird.  It is no accomplishment of mine that a few of my ancestors were Ancient Planters!  I wasn't even there!  I do genealogy because I love the stories of all my ancestors. I love seeing how they moved around, who they married, how they coped.  I love thinking about why they left Pennsylvania for Nebraska or North Carolina for Kentucky or the Rhineland for California or, indeed, England for Virginia.  I marvel at the hard decisions these people made and the struggle of it all.  Everybody in your tree has a story. And all the stories are compelling and all the stories are part of the greater American story. I have been pursuing the story of your illegitimate great great grandmother with as much zeal as the story of any colonial planter. 

I still hope I find a woman accused of witchcraft though.  I'll keep digging.

Love,
Mom

Bessie Colver--Your Ticket to the DAR

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

I always thought my family came from 19th century immigrants--you know the old Irish Potato Famine story with a little Scottish subplot thrown in.  And, trust me, there is plenty of that.  But I have discovered a few family lines that go way back to the fun-loving days of John Winthrop and John Smith. Take Bessie Colver, for example.  Your great-great grandmother, Bessie, has some darn fine colonial roots. I'm not sure she knew it herself, but her lineage goes all the way back to Edward Colver (1600-1685), one of the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Not only that, in Bessie's line are also the Arnolds (a family that goes back to Colonial Rhode Island, was among the first pioneers of Kentucky, served in the Revolutionary War, and produced the most infamous traitor in our nation's history), the Noels (Huguenots that came to Virginia from the Netherlands in the middle of the 17th century), the Grays (who were among the original Colonial families of Jamestown), the Bone family (Scots who colonized Ulster--Northern Ireland-- in the early 17th century and came to Pennsylvania in the 1690s), and the Brownsons (early--1650s--landholders in Hartford, Connecticut).

So, don't forget that you are really Daughters of the American Revolution!  I don't think I will be joining the DAR anytime soon.  I am still stuck on what they did to Marian Anderson back in the 1930s.  But when you turn 18, it's up to you.

Love,
Mom

The Truth About Your Mom

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

I know you are being raised to think of yourselves as nice Jewish girls--and you are nice Jewish girls!  But, I am afraid there is more to the story.  You can blame me for that.  You see, just like your mother, you are also nice Irish-Scottish-English-Danish-French girls.  On your father's side you get names like Shapiro, White, Kuperstock, Michels, Weiler, Zinnamon, and Stein. On my side you get names like Fraser, Christensen, Sweeney, McGoldrick, Colver, Albert, Noel, and Miller.

What amazes me about you girls that is that in your family tree one can see so much history, so much human drama.  Let's see.  So far in my family tree project I have found direct ancestors who have witnessed or participated in the following: the founding of the Plymouth colony (the Colvers), the Huguenot migration to Virginia (the Noels), the Revolutionary War and the pioneer history of Kentucky (the Alberts), slave-holding (the Alberts), the early history of Iowa (the Colvers), the Irish Famine and subsequent migration to America (the McGoldricks and the Sweeneys), the Haymarket Riots in Chicago (the Frasers), the growth of the meat-packing industries of the mid-west (the Christensens), the migration of Russian and Polish Jews to New York between 1880 and 1920 (the Kuperstocks, the Shapiros and the Whites), and the migration of German Jews to Gold Rush California (the Michels).  Wow.  And there are still maternal lines I have not discovered. I will be telling you more about all of this in the coming months.  Stay tuned!

Love,
Mom

The Truth About Your Dad

Dear Miriam and Sarah,

You know your dad as a fun, hard-working, loving father who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. I know him as a wonderful husband and a good man who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible.  But did you know that he could actually be the poster child for Bay Area Jewish History Month if there was such a thing. Let me explain:

Your father is a complex and fearsome combination of the two big strands of the Bay Area Jewish community--the German Jews and the Eastern European Jews. His paternal relations, the Michels, are the German Jews and they have been in San Francisco since the 1860s. On the maternal side are the Eastern European Jews, the Shapiros and Whites (or Witkoviches).  They came to New York in 1890 and 1920--so during the Great Migration--and moved to San Francisco in the 1930s. The Michels, like most of the German Jews who came to the Bay Area in the middle of the 19th century, were fairly prosperous merchants.  Many belonged to Temple Emanu-el, though they were never particularly observant. Mostly they were pretty assimilated and they enjoyed the pleasures of San Francisco life, including the delicious shellfish!  On the other side, there was Rabbi Saul White, one of the great Conservative Rabbis of San Francisco. Saul was raised in a Polish shtetl and his mother Chava was an observant, Yiddish speaking woman.  Now, Saul assimilated too in his own way, but you get my point.

Your father seems to have merged these two strands and come up with a pretty interesting and mostly workable Jewish identity.

On the one hand,

• He definitely has the aristocratic bearing of the German Jews
• He loves shellfish and has never been able to turn down a local Crab in Black Bean Sauce

On the other hand,

• He takes his girls to services every weekend
• We keep a kosher home
• He objects vociferously to guitar playing on the Sabbath
  

How does he do it?  I don't know really, but he does it with style, don't you think?

Love,
Mom