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.

Midwinter-Grantham-Kench-And Me

Until last week, I didn't even know of the existence of the lady in the above photo. Her name was Amy Midwinter, and she would have been my great great grandmother through my paternal grandmother. I have never been particularly close to my father's family even though they live in close proximity to me because my parents divorced when I was 4. I haven't seen my father since I was 14 (15 years, though we talk online and on the phone occasionally), and he's basically the black sheep of his family. I knew VERY little about his mother's family. I knew she came from Coventry, England. I knew her maiden name and I knew her sister's first name (which turned out to be a nickname, even though I've met her a couple of times), and THAT WAS IT! Well, I managed to find her birth record (and her sister's) on Ancestry.ca. From there, I found her mother (Edith Maud Grantham Kench) and her mother's mother (Amy Midwinter Grantham), learned about some cousins (Hi Neil! Hi Graham!), a half-sister given up for adoption in 1929 (Doreen Kench or Doreen Standon?), and my great grandfather Albert Frederick James Kench who passed away at the age of 33 in late 1925, shortly before my grandmother, Alberta June Kench Vance was born in January 1926.

The woman in the picture above has a striking resemblance to me. It's uncanny, really. My husband made note of it right away. Amy was born in 1848 in Oxfordshire and didn't have my great grandmother Edith until she was about 48! She was married twice (Isaac Web, and then once he passed away she married my great great grandfather Edwin/Edward/Edmund Grantham) and has A LOT of children. I don't know a lot about her, except my grandmother told me last week she was a 'battle axe'.



Amy's headshot.


Me in January 2008.


Comparison.



This would be a photo I was also given recently (thank you Neil!) of my great grandparents, Albert and Edith Kench. Albert passed away in 1925 and I didn't know a thing about him until last week and the only thing I knew about Edith was that she passed away a couple of years before I was born in the farmhouse my grandparents had in Bass River, Nova Scotia. Edith died in 1978, and I was born in 1980. She came to Canada with her daughters when my grandmother June was 1921. They lived in British Columbia for some time and my paternal grandparents got married in 1949. I believe she might have married again as her name at her death was Edith Reynolds. I also have a resemblance to her, as can be seen in the photo above. My brother looks very much like her husband Albert.

I have been having dreams about these relatives. I'm a believer in reincarnation, and I also think there is a genetic link to such things. Perhaps I was one of these women in a former life? Who knows. All I know is that this fascinating and I'm enjoying every minute of it.

Welcome

I've decided to create a blog that will deal strictly with my genealogical endeavours and newly developed genealogy business-SAGEQUINN Genealogy. My business site is: http://sagequinn.vpweb.ca

Business card:



I also have extensive research on my family and my husband's on Ancestry.ca, if anyone is interested.

I have over ten years of experience and have always been dubbed the "family historian" since I was a young child because I had a knack of remembering people, their birth dates, familial connections, etc.

I started an actual family tree in late 1998 and into 1999, mostly from a computer lab sometimes until the late evenings on the campus of the university I was attending. It all started with a mysterious young girl named Sadie Coon, who was born June 1, 1896 in Springhill, Nova Scotia, Canada. It turns out she was the older half-sister of my maternal great grandmother Rose Bell Coon Newcombe (born 1910). Rose's father Alexander "Sandy" Coon was about 22 years older than her mother Ivanetta "Nettie" Livingston Coon, so I suppose in retrospect it isn't so shocking to learn that he was married prior to having a family with Nettie, especially since most of my great grandmother and her siblings were born out of wedlock, but that's a skeleton I'll leave in the closet for today. ;-)

I found Sadie via census information for 1901. Learned her mother was one Ethel J. McLean who was married to Sadie Coon in 1896. I can't find anything after 1901 on either Ethel or Sadie, but Sandy went on to have another family and died in 1939 when my maternal grandmother was 11 years old. Little Sadie still haunts me and influences me to this day.

It just went from there. Lots and lots of branches of my tree have been researched and discovered. I spent long hours on the Church of Latter Day Saints online archives, jotting down notes, printing things off, compiling family trees. I dated people who were adopted and that became an interest to me as well, helping them find their biological families. I am now married to a man whose own father was adopted in 1953. He was born in Montreal to Jewish parents, and anyone who has done any amount of research on Quebec records and Jewish records knows how time consuming (but equally rewarding) it can be. I have found my father-in-law's biological family, very recently actually, and now it's just a matter of figuring out where he fits in. Some living family are very receptive, some not so much, but they all acknowledge that he is one of theirs, but we still have more doors to unlock.

In the past two weeks, I have discovered my paternal grandmother's long lost family in England, made contact with two cousins, found a photo of my great great grandmother that could be me, learned that my grandmother's father died a month before she was born at the age of 33, found records about her younger half-sister who was given up for adoption in 1929 (she has since asked me to look for her), found out my great grandmother was married AGAIN when they came to Canada, so many old photos and relatives...it boggles the mind!

I've also been in contact with my third cousin (who I met on Ancestry.ca two years ago) who has helped me rework my maternal grandmother's entire paternal line and found new ancestors, old photos and it's just goes on and on.

All of this has been done in the past month.

So this is my passion. I am making a business of it. And I want to share it with you all.