Goldmark = Goldwark = Goldman

Finally!

My great-grandfather Morris Goldmark is an elusive guy. I've been looking for records to figure out more about who he was, where he was from and maybe figure out who his parents were for a LONG TIME. I have some anecdotal stories from my grandmother and her brothers, but I've never been able to find any records to back it up.

Until this past weekend...

One is supposed to work backwards in genealogy - find the most recent records first, then work backwards. So in this case, that would mean starting with US Census records. For years I have searched the 1930, 1920 and 1910 census records for Morris and his family.

Finally - I found it. Under Moris Goldwark. Apparently, to the indexer, the "m" looked like a "w". I found this in the 1920 census. Then I expanded my search in the 1930 and found them again under Morris Goldman. I'm 100% confident it's the right Morris because the wife and children all are correct.

Note #1: search engines are finicky. "Morris Goldmark" did not lead to "Moris Goldwark". But when I changed the first name to "Moris" (I dropped an "r"), that's when the magic happened. I don't quite understand it, but it reminded me that I can't rely on the search engine to find name variations, I need to try a bunch myself.