Get all the stories... get them now!

Whether or not you're new to genealogy, one thing that you must do: contact living relatives (especially older ones) and get their stories! It's so sad, but they won't be with us forever and once they're gone, they take their memories with them.

Case in point:

I was so happy when I brought home a copy of the 1920 census where my grandfather and several siblings were kids living in my great-grandfather's house. One of the neat things about census records is that several list a person's occupation. According to the 1920 census, one of my grandfather's older brothers, Peter, was a Shoemaker. Sounds normal enough, right?

A few months later I visited my great-Aunt Zitzie (another of my grandfather's older siblings) in the nursing home. She was in her early nineties, but as sharp as ever. At one point, the whole thing about Uncle Peter being a shoemaker came up. My family were traditionally farmers and carpenters, so this was odd and something we thought we should ask about.

Apparently, in my family's history and/or culture, a "Shoemaker" was not a favored profession. According to Zitzie, she remembered the day the census man came around. Uncle Peter did something to upset their dad that day, so when asked about the occupation of his kids and Peter came up he called him a "Shoemaker" - an insult, not his true occupation.

The point of this little story? It's great to gather all the paper records (there's plenty of time to do that). But if you have the ability to get information and stories from real, live people, DO IT!

P.S. Aunt Zitzie passed away that summer. I'm so happy I at least got to speak with her when I did.

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.