Family History by Sid

       There is an unfair stereotype of extremely intelligent people. Many times they are portrayed as socially inept, and singularly focused on their research. They are referred to as nerds or geeks with boring lifestyles and almost childlike interests. Television and movies cashed in on this representation and created characters that their audiences made light of. My uncle Herman Levine meets the description of an extremely intelligent scientist. He was,however, the antithesis of the nerdy geeky wallflower. He was no Sheldon Cooper.       Herman Saul Levine was born on February 11th, 1922 in Jeannette,PA just moments before his twin brother, Henry Samuel Levine (affectionately known as uncle Sam.) Even though Herman was born first Sam always claimed that he was older because he crossed the international dateline from west to east and therefore lived the same day twice. The twins were the fourth and fifth children of my grandparents Louis...

       Everything in the world can be reduced to numbers. Our age is a number, our heights and weights are numbers. Your bank balance is a number. Our favorite sports teams have wins and losses recorded in numbers. There are statistics available on everything imaginable. We are warned by doctors if our blood pressure numbers are too high or blood iron level is too low. Genealogy is no different.       Researching our family history is more of an empirical exercise than an objective observation of what happened. It relies too much on older documents where mistakes in spelling, dates, and places can be wrong. Much of what we use is word of mouth evidence with no documents attached. That leads to making assumptions and speculation about who is related to whom. But numbers are important.       I have 1611 people on my family tree. The tree starts with my two children and traces their ancestry back through both parents a...