A Tale of Two Brothers and How I Found Them

 

    I’ve been struggling with my genealogical research for the past several months. I seem to have lost focus and can’t decide which direction I want to go in. Should I search out new cousins via DNA matching or should I research people in my tree to confirm the facts and find new items to add to their stories? Or, should I just organize my data? A simple bike ride indicated what would be my next project.

 Philip and Bessie Snyder gravestone

     We were in Philadelphia for just over three weeks, spending time with our kids and visiting other family and friends. We wanted to visit the gravesite of Philip and Bessie Snyder (Arlene’s maternal grandparents) but we always seemed to be in a bit of a time crunch and just didn’t get there. The day before we left I decided to take a ride down to Montefiore cemetery in Elkins Park to place a stone on their metzivah but to also find out what Philip’s father’s name was. We knew his mother’s name was Esther but didn’t have any documentation that told us what his father’s name was. Faivel ben Chaim is engraved in the headstone so now we know that his father’s name was Chaim.

 

Faivel Schneider ship Manifest with blow up of Famel Schmeider

     Faivel, or Philip, which was his Americanized name, had a brother, Moische or Morris. Philip had three daughters and Morris had three daughters and a son. I had census reports and naturalization papers but I wasn’t sure where in Europe they hailed from. Ship manifests would generally give us that information but I couldn’t find them on Ancestry.com or Familysearch.com. I tried the Ellis Island database with no luck at first but after rereading Philip’s naturalization papers I was armed with the date he arrived and the name of the ship he sailed in on. I narrowed my search using this new information but still no luck. I finally broadened my search by not using his full names but just the initials, and increased the date range and voila, he appears as Famel Schmeider on the boat Moskwa instead of Faivel Schneider on the boat Moscaw in 1908. The people that index these documents have trouble reading the cursive and do their best to transcribe. Unfortunately many of the documents were filled out by people who had handwriting that was as bad as my own. 

     When I first looked at the manifest I thought it showed that Philip met his mother, Esther in New York. Upon further review I discovered that her name was under the column labeled “name and address from country that alien came from.” Esther was still in Europe. The next page had a column labelled “relative or friend you are joining and their address.” This column had the name B. Gellerman and he was an Uncle living on east 115th street. I looked in the 1910 census and couldn’t find a B. Gellerman in New York at that time. The name Gellerman had not popped up on Arlene’s side of the family before. 

Philip with wife, Bessie on their wedding day

 

Morris Snyder with wife, Anne and three of their children

     Arlene had always said that she and her grandfather had the same birthday. January 15th but 67 years apart. His ship manifest says he was 20 years old when he entered the country. The census reports say he was born in either 1887 or 1888. His naturalization papers list his birthday as 12/15/1887, his draft registration says 12/9/1887, and his draft card states 1/15/1889. His brother was born in 1889 according to most documents so I think that Philip was born in December of 1887 or January of 1888. 

    Philip’s hometown is listed as what looks like Wolf but could very well be Molif which I’ve been told refers to Mogilev in Belarus. Morris show the same town on most of his documents except his WWI Veterans Service and Compensation notice. That one states Pottowa, Russia as his place of birth. I can’t find that town. 

 

Morris Snyder ship manifest with blow up stating he was going to his brother

     Morris entered the USA in 1910 on the ship Volturno. Once again I had to fool around with different filters and resorted to using initials to find his manifest but soon came up with Moische Iser Schneider. He was from the same town as Philip and his relative in that town was his mother, Esther Schneider. He came to join his brother, Faivel Schneider who was living at 114 Norfolk street in New York. I found a Moritz Schneider living at that address in the 1910 census which was taken in April. Moritz was a boarder and Faivel was no longer living there. I still haven’t found Faivel (Philip) in the 1910 census. 

     I generally check to see if the people I am researching show up on other people’s trees on Ancestry. Morris Snyder (Moische Schneider’s Americanized name) had a daughter, Elsie and she married Gerald Blum. A cousin of Gerry’s has a tree on Ancestry which includes Morris Snyder. I contacted her and thanked her for some of the info I gleaned off of her database. 

    My next project is to establish the relationships of all of the Levins and Levines and other family members that settled in Westmoreland County just east of Pittsburgh. This will be a real challenge. The uncertain indexing and the constant inconsistency of dates and names is what makes family research more difficult than it would seem to be. The rewards and elation are great when you figure it all out but it is the reason many genealogists don’t have much hair.