Weekly Genealogy Blogging Prompt #15

Genea-Bloggers sent me an invite to this week's event for genealogical blogging. The description said:

Week #15: List some vital signs. Talk about specific birth, marriage and death certificates. Topics may include misspelled names, fudged dates, other anomalies that stand out in your records.

Thanks to We Tree (http://wetree.blogspot.com/2009/01/jump-start-your-genealogy-blog-52-ideas.html) for the inspiration!

So here I am and I am going to discuss someone from my husband's lineage. My husband is Jewish and since a lot of his grandparents, great-grandparents, etc., were immigrants from Eastern Europe, many changed their names once they entered the United States and Canada. One ancestor in particular has been a bump in the road and we're still sorting her out.

She would be my husband's great great grandmother. His mother's mother's grandmother. We have her name as Chana Lapidus Cohen and she married Abraham Levin, and they had six children (I think?), one being a son named Joshua (rest were all girls). Joshua married Tillie/Tova Engel and they had five children, one being my husband's grandmother Gloria Levin who married his grandfather Harvey Shatz.

Now, we know that Chana and Abraham Levin were from Russia. Abraham came to Canada in 1904, and Chana came in 1906. On the 1911 Canadian Census, they were living in St-Laurent, Quebec (Montreal), and they miraculously both have the same birth date of "Jul 1877". The last name is misspelled to "Levene", but all the children are listed with proper ages and birth dates (cross-referenced), and her name is listed as Cherry.

So now Chana is Cherry.

We also have Joshua Levin's marriage certificate, where he married Tillie Engel on March 9, 1924. Joshua Levin was put entered into some database somewhere as "Joshua Sevin" and Tillie was "Tillie Angel" and then "Tillie Angle" in the actual document, but all the information is correct. Joshua's parents are listed as "Abraham Levin and his wife Cherna Lapidus".


This is the actual document from Ancestry.ca, entry is on the right.

Brian's mother only knew Chana as "Bubby Levine" (even though the family went by Levin), so unforunately she hasn't been able to figure that out.

Now we also have the marriage certificate for the marriage of "Minnie Levine" and "Kasher/Kasper Geffin" which took place on June 15, 1921 in Montreal. Minnie was the oldest daughter of Abraham and his wife Chanah/Cherry/Cherne. If you look at the document, you will see that Abraham's wife is now listed as "Shirley Cohen".


Again, it is on the right.

We also have the marriage of another daughter of Abraham Levin and his wife that gives another name. On February 27, 1936, their daughter "Hattie Levin" (someone wrote Hattie Lewin on the database but Levin is the alternate name) to "Issie Dusiger" in Montreal. Hattie's parents are listed as "Abraham Levin and his wife Shirley Lapidus Cohen".


Again, the listing is on the right.

So what WAS her name? No one in the family knows about the "Lapidus", and most of the elder Levin clan say her maiden named was Cohen. Sometimes the family was Levine, other times Levin. Sometimes she was Chana, other times she is Cherna, Cherry or Shirley.

It's a mystery but I plan on figuring it out...eventually.