Family History by Sid

       Schwartz is a very common Jewish surname. It means black in German and Yiddish. There are not a lot of famous Schwartzes out there. Stephan Schwartz is an American lyricist and composer. Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked are among his most famous works. Jim Schwartz is the defensive coordinator for my Philadelphia Eagles. Allison Schwartz is a former congresswoman from my district in Pennsylvania. Mel Brooks used the line “May the Schwartz be with you” in his classic Star Wars parody, Spaceballs. None of these people are related to me or appear in my family tree. There are however, 20 people with the last name Schwartz that do make an appearance.                                                   Arlene’s great grandmother, Rose Rodman nee K...

     Between 1919 and 1929 my grandfather, Louis Levine bought and sold over 50 pieces of property in Jeanette, PA. This is not news to me. Our family lore stated that Louis was a contractor and built a street of houses in Jeannette and it was called Levine Street. It is more likely that during those 10 years he bought land and either sold it to someone or perhaps had houses built on some parcels and then sold those. He had three different partners during that time period. There were parcels of land labeled from the Levine Penn plan and others from the Levine Leiberman plan.      I attended a genealogy seminar about using land records to aid in my family history research. Jeannette was in Westmoreland County so I googled the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds, searched his name and got 55 hits about transactions he was involved in. I’m not going to bore you with the details of every transaction but I will highlight the significant ones. The fi...