What I Didn't Know I Didn't Know. The Sequel

 

    Family research is an ever changing landscape. Everyday you find something new, be it a birthdate, a nickname, or a city where someone once lived. For instance, The Baron family emigrated from Traby in Belarus to Westmoreland county in Pennsylvania. This is the same path that my Levine family took and there is some mention that there is a family connection there. Not unlikely given the size of Traby in the early 20th century. I have yet to find any evidence of a connection but that doesn’t mean I won’t be writing about it in a future blog post. 

1950 census showing Moe, Minnie, and Marian on Peach street near 17th

Levine Bos. calendar showing address at 2005 Peach street.

1950 census showing Levine family mistakenly indexed as Bauer on West 8th Street

     When the 1950 census was released in April of this year I scoured the pages looking for my family in Erie, PA. I found my parents and older sister on Peach street near 17th just a few blocks away from my father’s business. He and his brother Sam owned Levine Bros. Auto Parts at 2005 Peach street. Sam was still living with his parents and his sister, Ruth but I wasn’t able to find them. The 1950 census had not been indexed yet and I had to download each individual report and exhaustingly scrutinize each page looking for the Levine family name. I looked at every district that I was told they had lived and all of the districts that the Jewish families of Erie were prone to live in. Although I came across lots of my friends’ families I never did find my grandparents' household. Somehow I came across them living on west 8th street in Erie. Sam was listed as a manager of an auto parts business. Ruth was a secretary at a social agency. They were listed as the Bauer family because whoever indexed the report, mistakenly listed the name above theirs as head of household and continued his Bauer surname through the whole next family. West 8th street is a bit of a mystery to me but I believe my grandfather moved there to be closer to his used clothing business.

Morris Boxinbaum's enlistment record showing height at 5'2"

Showing my basketball prowess

     I am the runt of the family. My male first cousins on both sides, Paul, Steve, David, Elliot, Rob, Aaron, Manny, Brian, and Henry all stand or stood close to 6 feet tall. I am a whopping 5 foot 4 inches. My father was 5’10” and his father was also tall. We don’t know how tall because at age 20 he had lost both legs in an accident and probably lost some inches when fitted for prosthetics. So where did this short gene come from. I was perusing the military records of my mother’s father, Morris Boxinbaum and it states that he was only 5’2”. I guess I can blame him for my diminutive stature. Ironically, my favorite sport to play was basketball. I was a pretty good point guard even though my shooting eye was below average. I was also a good rebounder. I may be only 5’4” but I play like I’m 5’7” .    

    Arlene gave me a birthday present in 2021. She had her DNA tested with Ancestry.com so that I could start finding out more about her family. Her number one DNA match was somebody named Susan M. and she matched Arlene at a 2nd cousin level. I sent Susan a message and she did not respond. When I looked at her profile it said she hadn’t been on Ancestry for almost a year and she did not have a family tree attached to her account. Also, when I checked her shared matches there were no recognizable names. Dead end until last month. I was doing some other research and I noticed that Susan had attached a tree to her account and it was named the Schwartz Family tree and Susan had logged into her account within the previous week. Arlene’s Grand Aunt, Hannah Rodman had married Jack Schwartz and Susan was their granddaughter. The Schwartz side of Arlene’s family is quite large but it is mostly a step family so there is no blood connection. The only biological connection between these two families is through Jack and Hannah’s children. Cheryl Schwartz (a fellow amateur genealogist} is also a second cousin to Susan but only through her father’s side. Cheryl and Arlene share a small amount of DNA but most likely due to endogamy.

     I brought up Cheryl because her husband has the last name of Grenetz. I was doing some research on Paul Ringold’s (my cousin) family. Paul had a Grand Uncle named Isadore Ringold. He married a woman named Hannah Greenetz which just happens to be Cheryl’s Husbands’s Grand Aunt. .I contacted Cheryl with this news and she informed me that her husband is not a Grenetz after all. The man that he thought was his father really wasn’t. Here is a real case where they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

     In my previous post of what I didn’t know I mentioned that Arlene’s grandfather, Philip Snyder may have been from Latvia. Since then I’ve found documentation that he and his brother, Morris were from Mogilev which is in Belarus. I also found out that Philip’s wife Bessie was from Zhetoma which is in Ukraine just east of Kiev. 

     I’m sure that I will find many more things that I did not know about my family and I will share with you all in a future post.