>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
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>> Mary-Jane Deeb: Good afternoon, and welcome to the African Middle East Division of the Library of Congress. I'm Mary-Jane Deeb I'm the chief of the division and I'm delighted to see you all here. I always do a little spiel before which is I talk about, our division and I do so because we're also recorded. So it's important. As you know, many of you know we're made up of three sections, there's the African, the Hebraic and the Near East sections. And we're responsible for 78 countries from around the world, extending from the whole Near East, Central Asia, the [inaudible] the whole content of Africa and North and Sub Sahara. And we go up sometimes even up to China, deal with some communities there. And of course we collect, material from all over the world. So, we are also very active in developing collections in greeting visitors coming from all the countries that I mentioned and the different regions. We organize programs, symposia, workshops, we also organize exhibits. And in 2012, for example we celebrated 100 years of Hebraic here at the library, with a wonderful exhibit entitled Words Like Sapphires, 100 years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress. And then many of you know Peggy Pearlstein [phonetic], she used to be the head of the Hebraica section, and Sharon, and Brenner, and many others were involved in putting the exhibit together. We also invite scholars and experts who have researched and done work in areas of responsibility to share with us their thoughts, their research, their findings. So that we come out enriched from, the proceedings. And we celebrate heritage month. In February it's Black History month, in March it's Norooz, the Persian New year. And in May we always celebrate Jewish-American heritage month. So I wish to thank the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington for partnering with us in the celebration at the library. And not only this year, but for several years past. Today's program with Dr. Janette Silverman, who is a past resident of the Jewish Genealogy Society, will address a historical issue. She will be talking about one of her projects, that focuses on the family history of the Blumenthals of the Upper Lower Peninsula of Michigan. And now to introduce the program and the speaker is our own Sharon Horowitz, a senior reference librarian in the Hebraic section of the African Middle East Division. Sharon.
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>> Sharon Horowitz: Thank you, Mary-Jane. Good afternoon welcome to the African and Middle Eastern reading room. On behalf of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington, and the Hebraic section, let me thank you all for coming to today's program. In celebration of Jewish-American heritage month. As you heard, I'm Sharon Horowitz, I'm a reference librarian in the Hebraic section. The Hebraic section marks its beginnings in 1912 with the receipt of 10,000 Hebrew books and pamphlets whose purchase was made possible by a gift from New York Philanthropist, Jacob Schiff. From those humble beginning our collections have grown to around 250,000 items in Hebrew Yiddish Ladino, Judeo-Persian and other Hebraic script languages. And our holdings also include an important collection of [inaudible]books. The sections holdings are particularly strong in the areas of Bible [inaudible] liturgy, Hebrew language and literature, responsa and Jewish history. Two of our missions in this division are to publicize our collections and to bring people into the library. And one way we do that is by holding lectures and having programs such as the one we are hosting here today. Before I introduce today's speaker, it is my pleasure to call upon Dr. Eugene Alpert, president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington. And one of today's programs co-sponsors to say a few words about the society.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Eugene Alpert: Thank you, Sharon it's my pleasure to be here this afternoon. And I'm going to speak very briefly let you know that the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington is composed of about 250 members, and we were founded in 1980. Our mission is to, discover, document, and share the family history of people who have Jewish backgrounds. And we meet about 10 months a year, in fact Janette was giving a presentation yesterday on the Ukrainian special interest group of Jewish Gen. And I want to welcome you all here this afternoon, if you're interested in joining and learning more about the association, I've got some brochures on the back table there. So thank you again, all for coming.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Sharon Horowitz: Thank you very much Dr. Alpert and now a word about our speaker. Dr. Silverman has been involved in Jewish genealogical research for 35 years. Currently, she is a senior genealogist, research manager and ancestry pro genealogist. Previously she has worked in Jewish education, published widely in genealogy and been a frequent speaker at conferences and meetings in the United States and Israel speaking on such topics as, personalizing Jewish history using archival and digital databases for research. Ellis Island mythology and using mobile books and [inaudible] as genealogical resources. Dr. Silverman is the co-chair of the IAJGS Conference being held in August in Seattle. She has suggested that her love of genealogy has its roots in her father's love of history and Judaism and her mother's love of jigsaw puzzles. Her presentation today will discuss methodology and resources for doing genealogical research. She will be sharing her own family research as a case study. Before I turn the podium over, however, I must mention that this event is being videotaped for subsequent broadcasting. There will be a formal question and answer period after the lecture at which the audience is encouraged to ask questions and offer comments. Please be advised, that your voice and image may be recorded and later broadcast as part of this event. By participating in the question and answer period you are consenting to the library's possible reproduction and transmission of your remarks. And now, please join me in welcoming Dr. Janette Silverman.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Janette Silverman: Thank you, everyone. I'm absolutely thrilled and delighted to have been asked here today and to be standing before you in such an amazing space. I hope you'll forgive a brief introduction written on a napkin that I figure dif Lincoln could get away writing the Gettysburg Address on an envelope, although this isn't anywhere near as erudite, it's a napkin from the cafeteria at the [inaudible] office. In the brief time I have available today, I plan to share with you the example, of one northern Michigan family as an illustration of the methods and sources of historical genealogical research and the micro stories that it produces. As Sharon indicated, whoops, sorry, as Sharon indicated, my talk today is about my own personal family history. A question about advancing the slides, is it just on the, is it on the computer? Oh, okay, great, thank you. So I should preface by comments by saying to you, that I ask more questions than I answer. Some of this is going to be due to the lack of time today, but mostly it's because I haven't found the answers yet. As in many genealogical research projects, for each tidbit of information that's discovered two or more questions arise. In the course of this research I utilized many different resources, I visited the Michigan State Library in Lansing and a local library in Standish. I spoke on the phone and via email with volunteers at the West Branch Ogemaw County, Michigan Historical Society and the Au-Gres Historical Society in Arenac County. And I visited countless archival resources on the internet.
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As every genealogist knows, when there's a branch of the family about which little or nothing is known that absolutely must be researched nature abhors a vacuum a genealogist of a course an empty leaf on a tree.^M00:10:11 In this case, the space was a branch on the tree belonging the family of my partner, Robert Clinton. And the appropriate place of course to start, as we all know, is by interviewing family. So my starting point was Robert's mother, Phyllis Blumenthal who was born and lived most of her life actually all of her life, sorry, in the Detroit area. As the oldest living person on her side of the family, I was hoping that she knew family stories. I began the research project in 2005 by asking her questions about her father Isadore Blumenthal. He died in 1976, I was hoping that she would know something about his family. When I asked her, she said the family was estranged. That's not very helpful is it? So I started with a few facts that Phyllis could provide. Phyllis was born in 1924 in Detroit, her father Isadore was born in 1895 in Standish, Arenac county, Michigan. The family was German and they owned a store. Isadore's father's name was Samuel and his mother was Dorah, and Isadore had two siblings, Hannah and Albert. Not an awful lot of information, but at least a local and a couple of names. In years gone by, without archival resources on the internet and ways to find and connect with people, resolving this would have been almost impossible, certainly without having people on the ground in Michigan who could look through the resources there. But today, research is much different. And yet sometimes it's still necessary to get away from the computer and pay a personal visit. I was able to visit the cemetery where Phyllis' grandparents Samuel and Dorah, were buried. Although photos of gravestones are sometimes available, through digital resources, how many of you have used digital resources to look at gravestones? So you know what I'm talking about, you know that there's some great resources out there including Joe Bar the Jewish Gen online worldwide burial records. Find a grave, Jewish data.com and other resources. But I like, when I can to visit a cemetery. I encourage everybody that can do that, to do it and to take photographs while you're there. If you can't of course, the next best thing is a photo online or one that the cemetery can send you. Some cemeteries will respond to a phone call by sending you a photo, some require a letter, a written letter along with payment, generally under $25 to send you a photograph. To take and send the photograph. Now the Hebrew on the stones, sometimes can give you some interesting information. The Hebrew on these stones includes the names of the deceased and their father's names, typical things to find on a Jewish tombstone. This also includes their death dates, the English, the Arabic numeral that you see on the gravestones are only of the year of their deaths. But the Hebrew gives us the date of their deaths too. Now, sometimes the Hebrew dates are off by a day from the English dates, has anybody encountered that? The, if the Hebrew data is off by a day from the English date it means that they died after dark, on that English date. So that sometimes gives you a useful piece of family history, something else to fill in the blanks about how your ancestors lived or died. In one case I found a tombstone whose English date was 11 months off from the Hebrew date, different year, different month, different date. Turned out, that the stone cutters had cut the date of the unveiling of the stone in the English date. And the Hebrew date was the correct date of death. I only found that out by doing some research, pulling a death certificate, checking on the Steve Morse website. Is everybody familiar with the Steve Morse website? Steve Morse has a phenomenal website that, links you to, it's called One-Step and it links you to things like Ellis Island and other ship manifest. But for this purpose, what it does is it gives you a translation between Gregorian and Julian dates, between Hebrew and Gregorian dates. And it's a wonderful resource, check it out. If you just Google Steve Morse you'll get there eventually.^M00:15:27 Now, we often think that the people that we're researching have unique names. But chances are there were other people living in that same place at that same time that shared their names. So the information on the gravestones becomes even more important with the addition of the father's name. You can often put together an entire generation because you know the father's name and this comes into play in a little while when I, tell you about people with the same sir names that we, whose relationship we needed to be able to determine. Now when I began my research, I attacked the questions by visiting, first the state library in Lansing using databases online, Googling people and places on the internet, making several phone calls, and working with individuals through exchanges of information via email. And my questions at the beginning were really basic, where was Standish, Michigan? I had absolutely no idea. I'm a New Yorker, what do I know about the Midwest? What kind of store did they have? How and when did they get from Standish to Detroit? And were there other relatives in Standish? More questions arose as I began my research. But these were just the beginning ones. I'm not going to walk you through my research step by step because it would not only be tedious for you but it would probably take just as long for me to do that as it did for me to do the research. But I am going to tell you the story of the Blumenthals, or at least as much of it as I've found to date. There's still much left to be discovered and in fact, now that I think about it, I realized how little I actually know. I'm not beginning at the beginning, because that would be beyond the scope of this discussion but rather I'm going to start with a brief mention that in 1881 the first of three Blumenthal brothers left Europe. Their names were Bernard, Phillip, and Samuel. Now remember I said the family was from Germany, how many of your families came from Germany, anybody? Do you know where in Germany they came from?
>> [Inaudible response]
>> Janette. Silverman: In Berlin.
>> [Inaudible response].
>> Janette Silverman:  Berlin and Pomerania, anybody else? You know I didn't know anything about German research. I still don't know. Because these people weren't from Germany.
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That caused me pause, and I needed to regroup and figure this out. It seems that the Blumenthal family was from Courland. Not Lativa, not Germany. Courland was originally settled by German knights although it was never owned by Germany. But the inhabitants thought of themselves as German. Not documented was the arrival of the oldest of the three brothers Bernard in 1881 at the age of 20. He very likely sailed into New York harbor but no evidence has been found yet to prove that. And frankly, I hate having these kinds of gaps, those of you who know me know that I really hate this. But there's nothing to be done about it except to keep researching. Those of you who are engaged in any sort of genealogical research know that this passion becomes an obsession. And is never ending. Ship manifest often have lots of wonderful information on them, but some of the early manifests only had lists of names. So it's really impossible to figure out if the people that you're looking up are really the people you want to be looking up. Because it's only a name, sometimes it's an age, it may have a generic country but not any more information than that. Later, ship manifests will give you, oh the name and address of the person and the country that they left. The name and address of the person they're destined to be going to, their occupation, and other useful information but not the earlier ones. And there are many, many resources online that can provide images of ships and details about specific sailings. You can get there looking at the Steve Morse website, you can get there on the ship's list.com and libertyellisfoundation.org, olive tree genealogy and of course the National Archives and Records of Administration, NARA.^M00:20:16 Now, our documented story begins in July 1882 with the arrival in New York of the youngest of the brothers, 17 year-old Samuel Blumenthal on board the SS Cimbria. No evidence has been found to date of whether Samuel joined Bernard in New York or went to join him, out west or if he remained in New York waiting for the arrival of the third brother, Phillip. In 1883 Phillip Blumenthal arrived in New York onboard the SS Grecian Monarch departing from London. He was 23 years old, and like Samuel, his occupation was listed on the ship manifest as laborer. You can see that his country of origin was noted as Germany, that would be this column there. Now Bernard started out in Traverse City, Michigan, and I've circled Traverse City in green for those of you who like me, have no frame of reference with Michigan. And his brothers probably joined him there, but again, I don't know that piece of information. The lumber industry was in full swing in the 1800s and there were supplies of all sorts that were needed. In Traverse City, the brothers may have been supplying the lumbermen with equipment. One of the really phenomenal things available through the internet is access to digital archives and the ability to search them in the blink of an eye. The Library of Congress, this institution has an amazing store of historical photographs among many other things. And this is from the Library of Congress archives. Now from 1881 until 1885 the brothers worked in and around the Traverse City area, by 1885 they had left Traverse City and settled in West Branch. That was a distance of about 90 miles, probably several days journey in the 1880s by horseback or horse and carriage. They may have visited there as their territory expanded and noticed business opportunities in a growing town. Other than that I have no idea why they went from Traverse City to West Branch. Hopefully one of these days I'll find that missing piece of information. According to records from the West Branch Ogemaw County, Michigan Historical Society, Bernard opened a dry goods store there in 1885. And this is his first store, the New York store. By 1887 either that store had closed or been renamed, or Phillip had opened his own store, the Chicago store. They're working their way around the country. In 1890, Bernard Blumenthal married Sophia Frank in Ogemaw County, marriage records are wonderful sources of information, it gives names of the parents of the bride and groom. It gives you an idea of where they might have been living, a little snapshot in time. By 1892 a second Blumenthal family was living on the lower peninsula, in Standish. Standish and West Branch are both within that large circle, and it's slightly less than 30 miles from West Branch. Probably a day's journey by horse. Marcus Blumenthal, this was the family that was now in Standish. Marcus Blumenthal and his family survived a fire in 1892 as reported in the local newspaper. Although most of the local newspapers I used are not available through digital searches, online, I was able to get a number of items through gen web links. And a wonderful archivist in Arenac County, who sent me many, many items by email. Many of the online archives have different selections of newspaper collections including genealogy bank, the archives belonging to individual newspapers, newspapers.com and fultonhistory.com. When you're looking for newspaper articles about a particular place or a time, you, just like other searches, you don't want to restrict yourself to just one resource. You want to use as many as you've got access to, because they all have slightly different things. And the searches are different on each of the websites that you go to. So you might come up with different results even though say two different archives have the same newspapers, because of the way the searches are configured you might have different results by the end.^M00:25:31 In August, 1894 Samuel Blumenthal identified on this marriage record as both Solomon and Sam. Married Dorah Gordon in New York. Samuel was born in Courland, I see this on his marriage record, right here. His parents were Israel and Hannah Gordon, their names are also on here. And he resided in West Branch, Michigan. Now Hannah's parents were Adolph Gordon and Hannah Drakman [phonetic], and she too was born in Courland but was residing n New York. Now other documents about Hannah, about Dorah, indicated that she might have been born in New York, I've never found proof of her birth in either Courland or New York. So it's just one of those other mysteries still waiting to be resolved. I also haven't found any information to prove or disprove whether her father Adolph Gordon, and Samuel's mother Hannah Gordon, were related. But like many other European Jewish families, they likely could have been. Jewish families have a habit of marrying within the families, first and second cousin marriages are very typical within different areas. Chances are that some of you may be missing a pair of great grandparents, because of cousin marriages. Something that's very typical when you're looking through Jewish genealogical resources to find that you can't find one set of great grandparents and then you discover that you were just looking in the wrong place because they were there. But they were hidden because of their other relationships to each other. Copies of New York City, records, vital records such as this marriage record are available primarily in two places the New York City Municipal Archives on Chambers Street, and through the microfilm collection at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. But there are indexes to these that are available in many other places, including familysearch.org and ancestry.com. Now after their marriage in New York, Dorah and Samuel returned to West Branch at least for a short while. By October 1895, on the same page in Standish, remember they were in West Branch now they're in Standish. This page records the birth of Israel Blumenthal who later changes his name to Isadore. You can see the date here in 1940 when that change was made official. And just a couple of lines above that, is Stella Blumenthal. Stella's Marcus' daughter, we read about the fire, with Marcus Blumenthal's family, Stella's his daughter. Some of the unanswered questions are why did they, why did Samuel and Dorah move to Standish? And what was the relationship between Stella Blumenthal's parents and Isadore's parents? The 1897 Michigan Business Directory lists two Blumenthals with dry goods stores in Standish. Harry and Samuel, who's Harry? Who's Marcus with a general store? I mean it's the same Marcus that we saw in the other records but who is he? To date, many documents referring to both Harry and Marcus have been located but in none of them is there any way to establish a familiar relationship between them. Or for that matter, between them and Isadore. Now as an aside, Marcus was not a brother of Bernard, Phillip, and Samuel, they're father was Israel and Marcus' father was Hyam [phonetic]. One of the many documents I haven't found to date, and there's a lot of documents I haven't found.^M00:30:03 Is the marriage record of Phillip Blumenthal and Sara Hill. Who by 1892, when their daughter is Estella who is born, were already married, and this is a 1900 census from West Branch Village, Ogemaw County. Phillip Blumenthal and his family and that gave me the information about how old their daughter was. So when the likelihood was of their marriage, sometime before she was born, probably. The 1900 census also shows Samuel and his family, they were living in Standish. And the U.S. Census is available through many websites, some of them are free, some of them are subscription based. And each of the archival collections is searchable through an index based on transcriptions of the data that's included in the original document. Some of the transcriptions vary in the type of information that's extracted from the census. Since these resources do their own transcriptions or have their own unique algorithms for searching, you often have to do searches in multiple resources. So if you're looking for a census record in one resource and you don't find it, go look for it in another resource. Sooner or later you're bound to find it, through an index or, if you don't find it through an index, go look page by page, find the ED, the enumeration districts through Steve Morse's website where he's got a handy little tool to figure it out. And go page by page. It may be tedious, but it's definitely worth it and sometimes when you're going page by page, you'll find things that you didn't even think of finding, like other relatives. Meanwhile back in West Branch, the store went through several changes and in the early 1900s became Blumenthal and Company. This picture of the Blumenthal store as well as the earlier pictures are from the Ogemaw County Historical Society's archive. Remember I said that for every answer there were a couple more questions, well, in October 1905 newspaper reported that cousin Helen Blumenthal from Chicago was visiting the family. Now remember one of the earlier stores was called the Chicago Store, maybe that was acknowledging the existence of a family in Chicago, maybe not. But, who was she? The only Helen Blumenthal I've been able to find and connect to the family was born in 1896 and she was Bernard's daughter. She certainly wasn't visiting from Chicago by 1905 when the rest of her family was still living in West Branch. I don't know who she was. Like I said, it's a never ending project. As verified by an August 1906 society note in the Arenac newspaper, the Standish Blumenthals, that's Samuel and Dorah and the West Branch Blumenthals, Samuel's brothers Bernard and Phillip stayed in touch. A 1909 photo from the historical society archives shows Bernard, his wife Sophia, and their children. I love this picture. It doesn't look like any of my other family pictures. I'm always saying that we all have the same set of pictures, maybe with just different faces overlaying them. But they all look the same, this doesn't look like any other picture I have. So maybe there's actually two pictures floating around, not just the one that I thought. On the 1910 census, living in Standish we find Samuel, Dorah, and their three children Isadore, Hannah, and Adolph. And just three doors away we see Harry Blumenthal who we first encountered in the 1897 business directory, and an Adolph Blumenthal. Both of them are boarders. Harry was 39 years old and Adolph was 29 years old, and they were born in Russia. They were probably born in Russia, the same way that the other Blumenthals were born in Germany. I think that they were all really from Courland, which may have been considered part of Germany because it was settled that way. It certainly had more right to be considered part of Russia because I think it probably was, at least for a brief period of time, part of the Russian Empire. Now by 1912 Sam and Harry Blumenthal, had established a dry goods store together.^M00:35:08 Remember the question, who's Harry? I still don't have an answer for it. I just have the question. But now they're in business together. One of the delights in doing this sort of research is locating oddities this is about the oddest thing I've ever found. It's a 1912 English sparrow certificate issued to Adolph Blumenthal, now I don't know if the Adolph is the Adolph living with Harry or the Adolph who was Samuel's son. But there was a bounty for killing two pests, sparrows and rats. And this is Adolph's certificate, he's entitled, it looks like 92 cents for his 46 sparrows, 2 cents a sparrow. And delivered, they weren't just taking his word for it, can you imagine? Going around killing them, collecting them, and then bringing them, I wonder if they were stored in the ice box.
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Now, by 1919 Isadore was living in Detroit. This is evidenced by his marriage to Minnie Stein [phonetic]. They lived in the Detroit metro area the rest of their lives. They had two daughters, Elaine and Phyllis. Elaine had no children, Phyllis had three children. And Isadore died, as I said earlier, in 1976 after a long illness. His daughters, well growing up didn't spend much time with their West Branch cousins, although Phyllis had some recollections of Martin, Phillip's son. She didn't remember the names of any of the other people, that were living in West Branch. She didn't even realize that there were people living in West Branch who were related to her. It's not clear when Samuel and Dorah moved to Detroit, but by 1920 that's where the family was. Now, Detroit, all the way down here, is 140 miles from Standish and 160 miles from West Branch. It's a really long, drive, possibly trains ran back and forth. But however the transportation method was, at that point, the families up in the peninsula and the family in Detroit certainly weren't spending a great deal of time together. Now Phillip and his family stayed in West Branch, as did Bernard and his family, and there's the 1920 census with both of the families and their children on there. The children of the three brothers did not all remain in Michigan through time. Samuel's three children stayed in the Detroit area. This is the original family group, so we've got Israel and Hannah Gordon back in Courland, and their three sons Phillip, Bernard, and Samuel and their wives. Bernard had married early, he married a woman named Anna Grabowski [phonetic], who probably died, and then he remarried Sophia Frank. And we looked at information about Sophia and Bernard earlier. And Phillip, as I'd said, married Sara Hill. These are the descendents of each of the families, many of whom stayed in Detroit but others left. So Phillip's daughter, Dorothy, and her husband Albert, settled in West Chester county, New York by 1927. In 1930 it was clear that Dorothy's brother, Isadore was living with Dorothy and Albert. And, as far as I knew, Isadore never married, or so I thought. As I was preparing for today's talk, all of the research is ever changeable. There's stuff coming in from the most unexpected places. So I'm preparing this talk, I thought I was done, and I got an email. And the email identified the writer as a descendant of, an Ira Mark Blumenthal. Ira Mark Blumenthal, son of Phillip. Well I know who all of Phillip's children were.^M00:40:16 Who's Ira mark Blumenthal? The only person he could possibly be is Isadore who I lost track of after the 1930 census. He stayed in New York, he became Ira Mark. Now I need to do a little more research to fill in the blanks. I know that Martin never married, I know that Hazel married this guy Monty. I know that Estella married Arthur, and these were their children. But I didn't have any information about Isadore. Now I need to go back and find Ira Mark, not Isadore. To do that I'll look in the 1940 census, I'll take a look at some city directories and some phone books. Since I know from this relative of his that he was living in New York, I'll also try checking out New York City marriage records and maybe even some death records. And see what I can find. There's got to be something, everybody leaves a trace, it's just how difficult it is to find those traces, those shadows of people's lives. Now, this is Bernard's family and Bernard's daughter Della, and her husband John Jacob Rueben [phonetic]left Michigan shortly after their 1918 marriage and settled in Toledo, Ohio. The rest of Phillip's and Bernard's children stayed in Michigan.
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Hannah married  Yale Roberts and as far as I know they had no children. But I guess if I can find that there was something more to Isadore maybe there's something else that I haven't uncovered about Hannah and Yale although, I think I know, who knows. Anything is possible. Adolph who also was named, was known as Albert, so we've got Israel known as Isadore, and Isadore known as Ira, and now an Adolph known as Albert. He married Reuben in 1923 and they also stayed in the Detroit area, they ultimately had two daughters Ada Ruth and Joyce. Ada has three sons and they no longer live in Michigan, they're family's settled in North Carolina, Florida, and Arizona. And Joyce lives in Canada and has one son. During the course of this research, I met an awful lot of relatives that nobody in the part of the Blumenthal family that I knew, knew of, including when I did a talk about the family up in the West Branch Ogemaw County Historical Society two years ago. We had met, I had met, via email, another one of the descendants, a grandchild or a great grandchild of one of the, of either Phillip or Bernard. I forget which now, and he came to that talk. And so at that talk I was able to introduce two cousins, who had never heard of each other before that day. It's one of the more exciting things that happens as you're doing research. How many of you have wound up meeting relatives that you'd never heard of before, never imagined through the research? Isn't it great? I've found, over the years that although I used to get, unbelievably and amazingly excited when I found my own relatives and I still do. I get just as exited if I met other people's relatives. I'm indiscriminate about how excited I get doing genealogical research. So I have a bunch of questions left. Who was Helen Blumenthal of Chicago? How are Harry, Marcus, and Adolph Blumenthal of Standish related to Samuel, Phillip, and Bernard? Or even to each other? I know that Marcus, Harry, and Adolph are not all brothers, two of them are. I could tell that from gravestones and death records, but I have no idea what the relationship is. I suspect, that if I can ever figure this out, that I'll find that their fathers were either brothers or first cousins, there's enough names between the, between the families, between Marcus' children, Samuel, Phillip, and Bernard's children. There's enough names that are the same or similar to make me think that they're all being named after the same people.^M00:45:24 I'm making an assumption here, but perhaps it's not a, correct assumption. I'm assuming that everybody knows about eastern European naming patterns, eastern European Jewish naming patterns. But I'm seeing a couple of heads shaking, so eastern European Jews, as opposed to Sephardic Jews, rarely name their children after living relatives. Children are generally named after deceased relatives, and what'll happen is say you've got children, their parents die, they've got children so grandchildren. And all of a sudden you've got flurry of kids in a family that all have the same name. They're all named after grandparents who died. You can track death dates of people based on naming patterns based on, children who all of a sudden are carrying their names. That helps you identify when people died and find additional family information. If you don't have birth dates of people but you know who they were named after, you can also sometimes figure out when they were born which helps you isolate the resources that you need to be investigating as you do more family research. I also don't yet know how Philip arrived in the United States, I'm sorry, how Bernard arrived in the United States. I don't know the year he arrived, I don't know where he came into, probably New York, but I don't know that for sure. I don't know how the brothers got from New York to Michigan, if they went in together, or if they all joined the pioneering first arrival. And I don't know why, they went from New York to Michigan. All of those things bother me. Sleepless nights bothering. Sometimes waking up at 4 o'clock in the morning with an inspiration of, I've got to go look for this there. Running to the computer and at 4 o'clock in the morning, doing some research. Now some of you are smiling or giggling, you've been there, you know what I'm talking about. Genealogist dreams. So I'd be really remised if I didn't make some comments about some of the resources I used during the course of this project. In 2005 I sent an email to the West Branch public library seeking assistance. Because in addition to everything else, genealogy is very much a networking effort, someone sent a copy of my inquiry to Louann Zetltle [phonetic], the president at that time, of the Ogemaw Historical Society. Who entered into now a decade long, correspondence with me. We've talked over the phone, we've emailed. And in 2014, 9 years after I started this, right after a visit to West Branch where I introduced, as I said two Blumenthal descendants to each other. We visited Standish in Arenac County and met with Joann Gulo [phonetic] of Au Gres Michigan and I apologize to Joann if I've mispronounced her last name. And if I've mispronounced the town, she's a volunteer at the Standish Historical Society and in the years since that visit, she has scanned and emailed me every document that she found in the society's archives. And in the courthouse, and the newspaper, that pertain to the Blumenthal family. Most of that archive isn't digitized and although it's really well organized ,thanks to the efforts of Joann and other volunteers, it's not all indexed or digitized. Of course, online my most common resources are ancestry.com, jewishgen.org, family search, the Library of Congress, The National Archives, and many other online archival resources. All of which paid a big part in this project as well as in many other research projects I'm involved in. And I thank you all for letting me do this today. Pardon, there was some instructions about asking questions. Okay, I'll repeat the questions.
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[ Inaudible Response ]
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>> Janette Silverman: Thank you, thank you. So I just received some advice that number one, that my number one question who is Helen Blumenthal of Chicago should really go at the bottom of the list, because social editors in newspapers receiving phone calls about visitors and other items to be put in often couldn't hear very clearly on the phones party lines and such. And they have taken notes, scribbled notes about the name of a person who was coming to visit and where they were coming from. And may not have been able to read handwriting correctly so I might want to just relegate that, search for Helen Blumenthal to the bottom of the list and assume that okay, it was somebody that was coming to visit the Blumenthal family. But maybe [inaudible] from [inaudible] and leave it at that. Thank you. Yes, Gene?
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[ Inaudible response ]
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>> Janette Silverman: Yeah, so one of the great resources online and I'm sorry that I failed to mention it, the Michigan Jewish, Historical archives has digitized all of their journals and there are a couple of articles in there about Jews in Traverse City and I don't remember the exact number, but there were Jews in Traverse City back then. But there is no mention at all in any of these, in any of the journals that I read, and I read through almost all of them and it's quite an extensive collection, didn't find any mention at all of the Blumenthal family. There was, Traverse City is on the water, and barges are coming in and out. There were a number of stores that had opened there to be able to supply lumber workers and I supposed, also the fur trade and other, trading goods. So there was a community of sorts, I suspect from what I've read that the Blumenthal brothers didn't have a store per say there, but they were peddlers. And they may have been picking up goods and going around to the different camps and trading there and coming back to town, perhaps supplying the stores with some goods, that they had gotten in exchange for the goods that they brought up there. So.
^M00:53:13
 [ Inaudible response ]
^M00:53:18
>> Janette Silverman: It is possible, I have not found that. I have not found nay connection there in the research that I've done. And I didn't see any similarities in the names that I was looking at in Traverse City and back in Courland. The resources that I used for the Courland portion of this research was from the, Lativa SIG on Jewish Gen, the Latvian special interest group which has done an amazing job with transcriptions of records from Courland. And there's a lot of information that's online through Jewish Gen. The Latvian government had their vital records revisions lists, conscription lists and tax records all online through the Latvian government site. I'm happy to send any of you that link, my cards are up front under the two monitors if anybody wants to be able to get in touch with me. And Christine Ouston [phonetic], from France who very regretfully died suddenly a couple of years ago, has done a phenomenal transcription of the vital records from the Latvian archives, from Courland. And, those are available, the indexes of the vital records are available and she did a great job in comprehensive transcriptions, from those. So the vital records themselves have very little additional information that's not on her transcriptions. The vital records are in, I'm going to tell you the language that they're in, and I'm going to get it wrong.^M00:55:02 I think that they're in Russian, but I won't swear to God. Don't hold me to that.
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[ Inaudible Response ]
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>> Janette Silverman: Oh yeah he, Isadore came to Detroit ad retired not, I'm sorry Samuel, Isadore's father, yeah, Isadore was quite ill for many, many years with rheumatoid arthritis. And wasn't able to work for a large portion of his life. Samuel retired not too long after arriving in New York, in Detroit, but they maintained stores until he retired. And I understand from family stories, that when he retired he was fairly well off, had a driver that took him around. And there's quite a number of family stories.
>> How many stores in Detroit?
>> Janette Silverman: He had at least a store in Detroit.
>> [Inaudible response].
>> Janette Silverman: Mmm mm, no. And I don't think that he had it for a long while. There's references to it, to when he sold the store in Standish, came to Detroit to retire but I found some other documents that indicate that he had, he was not retired when he first came to Detroit. Sitting in the front row is Samuel's great grandson, Robert Clinton. And he'll be happy to answer questions that you might have about his great grandfather who died before he was born. And his grandfather Isadore who he did know. Yes.
^M00:56:47
[ Inaudible Response ]
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>> Janette Silverman: Yeah, the family's not related as far as I know to any Jacobson family.
>> Okay but what I want to know.
^M00:57:14
[ Inaudible Response ]
^M00:57:55
>> Janette Silverman: Yeah, actually we do we've got their, we've got gravestones and the gravestones are really clear of the father's name and some other information. We don't know, I know that two of them are related to each other, and the third one is not.
>> Okay.
>> Janette Silverman: Okay. Yeah, yeah, Harry, Adolph, and Marcus are probably related. I assume that they may be cousins. Two of them are brothers, one is not.
>> I got the impression that they were [inaudible].
>> Janette Silverman: Yeah, no, I know their father's name, I'm sorry I probably wasn't that clear. And they came from Courland and settled in Michigan but again I don't know when they arrived. I don't know why they arrived, why the came there.
>> [Inaudible response].
>> No, Marcus, Harry, and Adolph died in this country. Their fathers, as well as Bernard, Philip, and Samuel's father never left Europe. Yeah.
^M00:58:59
[ Inaudible Response ]
^M00:59:20
>> Janette Silverman: Yeah, and thank you for that Mary-Jane. Yes, I've looked all over the place, but I have never found the arrival information for Bernard where I found it from his two brothers, from Samuel and Phillip within two years of his arrival. But never found, never found his ship manifest, not coming into the U.S. and not coming into Canada. But again at those early arrivals, it's just lists. And Blumenthal isn't an uncommon name. And I don't know what name he might have been traveling under. Thank you very much everybody.
>> Sharon Horowitz: Thank you very much, thank you, and thank you all.
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress, visit us at loc.gov.
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