Assumptions get us into all kinds of trouble. For years I searched for an ancestor, Noentjelena Grass, in passenger lists, trying all kinds of variants of her first and last names. Censuses, family tradition, and her date of marriage gave me a consistent immigration time frame, but I still could not find her.

I had almost given up. Then I received copies of letters she had written to relatives about ten years after her marriage. Not one clue about her immigration, but there were more subtle revelations. The letters were all signed “Lena.” Not Noentjelena or Noentje (names I thought she used), but Lena. After reading the letters it dawned on me–I had never really searched extensively for that first name in the manifests. So I went back.

A search of the passenger lists at Ancestry.com during New York’s Castle Garden era contained an entry for a Luie Gross arriving in 1873. The year was correct for my ancestor. Looking at the actual manifest the name looked like Lena to me, although I could see how it could have been read as Luie. Fortunately this entry was for a single female with a year of immigration and an age consistent to be my ancestor. Further work needs to be done so I can be reasonably certain I have the correct person, but I think I am on the right path.

Do you really know your ancestor’s name? Have you considered every nickname he or she might have used? Failure to consider one may cause the relative to remain unfound forever.

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Truth in the Family Story
In the “Ancestry Weekly Journal” of May 5th, you wrote about hyperinflation in Germany due to the country being hit with billions of dollars in war reparations in the 1920s.

My mom had always said her Uncle Hugo and his family went back to Germany after WWI to make a better life. The family story was that Uncle Hugo thought they could live less expensively there. According to my mother, they ended up broke and had to work on the boat to earn passage back to the States. Was this a family fable? Ancestry brought answers.

My Grand-uncle Hugo Fischer was sixteen in May 1891 when he immigrated to the U.S. with his mother and three siblings.

When Ancestry added the U.S. Passport database not long ago, I found an application, from 1920, for Hugo, his wife Regina, and their children, Elisabeth and Herman C. 

The passport was to be sent to Hugo Fischer in Bedford, Ohio and included great photos of the family. However, the passport stated that they were traveling for one year to Holland, Belgium, and Switzerland to “settle an estate and visit relatives.” Not a mention of Germany. What happened to the family story?

Again Ancestry answered, with my search of the New York passenger lists. On board the “George Washington” arriving in New York City, 07 April 1923 from Bremerhaven (page 135 out of 135, under “List of Aliens Employed on the Vessel as Members of Crew”), I found Hugo:

“. . . Fischer, Hugo; Asst Steward; hired: 3/27/23 in B’haven; Paid off in NYC . . .”

I found the other family members arriving on other ships in the weeks and months that followed. So it turned out that Grand-uncle Hugo did work his way back to the U.S. and “The Year Was 1923” gave a clear illustration of the reason. Thanks.

Cari Thomas

Continue reading →

The year was 1943 and World War II raged on. In Leningrad, there was finally a break in the siege of that city as the Red Army opened a land passage that would allow food and fuel to the starving and freezing citizens who had been trapped in the city since September of 1941. The siege wouldn’t officially end until January of 1944 (900 days after it began) and by then an estimated 632,000 people had died of disease, starvation, and the extremely cold winters.

In March and April of 1941, Jewish people in and around Krakow were rounded up and moved into a ghetto in the Podgorze district of Krakow. 20,000 Jews were confined to an area that had previously only housed 3,000. Illness and hunger took its toll on the ghetto inhabitants, and in subsequent years mass transportations to death camps began. Finally in March of 1943, the remainder of the population was either killed on the spot or shipped to death camps. The Krakow Ghetto was completely wiped out. 

In the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto, reports of the death camps were trickling in, and in January residents fired on German troops who were trying to deport another group of Jews. This initial resistance was successful and inspired the fighters, but in April German troops returned a final time. Although they were able to hold off the German troops for nearly a month, eventually they were unsuccessful. 7,000 Jews were killed there. Another 56,000 were deported to meet their fate in death camps. Continue reading →

Contributed by Maynard L. Keller, Jr., Roanoke, Virginia
Attached is a beach photo taken around 1910, probably Ocean City, New Jersey. My great-grandmother, Mary Ellen Mitman, is the person at the bottom left. Also pictured are her husband, Ulyssus Koder (top right); sister, Minnie (top center); Minnie’s husband, Linwood Singer (top left); and a family friend (bottom right).

Click on an image to enlarge it.