I hit a solid brick wall over thirteen years ago trying to find ancestors earlier than my great-grandparents on the Brotman/Brod branch of my tree. I still continued to find cousins, like my Goldfarb cousins, but even that had seemed to end. But recently another new Brotman/Brod cousin and I connected, thanks to the DNA Geek, Leah Larkin, the nationally known expert on genetic genealogy who has been helping me for years in my efforts to learn more about my Brotman/Brod family.

Back in December, Leah wrote to me, saying that she had located a new Brod family match, a woman descended from Gussie Goldfarb, my grandmother Gussie Brotman Goldschlager’s first cousin. Gussie Goldfarb was the daughter of Sarah Brod Goldfarb, and Sarah was the sister of my great-grandmother Bessie Brod Brotman, my namesake.¹

The new match was a woman named Ellen, and Ellen listed Gussie Goldfarb as her great-grandmother on her Ancestry tree. But Leah pointed out that on Ellen’s tree, Gussie was married to someone named Harry Gross and had had a daughter named Rosa in 1906 with Harry. Rosa was Ellen’s grandmother. I had no record of Gussie being married to Harry or of a daughter. On my tree, Gussie had married a man named Max Katz in 1910 and had died nine years later in 1919 when she was only 31 years old. Could there be an error in my tree? Or could there have been two different Gussie Goldfarbs?

Leah didn’t think the second possibility was likely because Ellen not only matched me, but she matched two other Goldfarb cousins with a lot more shared DNA—Alyce and Gabrielle, both of whom were descended from one of Gussie Goldfarb’s brothers, Alyce from Joe Goldfarb, Gabrielle from Julius Goldfarb. The number of shared centimorgans (213) between Alyce and Ellen was large enough to make them second cousins, once removed, and the amount shared with Gabrielle (111 cM) made her a third cousin to Ellen, the relationships they would share if Ellen’s tree was accurate. Ellen shared enough DNA with me (53 cM) to support the fact that we were third cousins, once removed. It certainly looked like Ellen’s tree was accurate and that her great-grandmother Gussie was the daughter of Sarah Brod Goldfarb.

So I contacted Ellen for more information, and she confirmed that Gussie Goldfarb was indeed her grandmother’s mother. When I told her that I only had one marriage record for Gussie and not to Harry Gross, Ellen sent me her grandmother Rosa’s birth certificate:

Birth record of Rosa Goldfarb

The birth record established that Gussie Goldfarb and Harry Gross were Rosa’s parents.

When I studied Ellen’s tree more carefully, I noticed that Ellen had indicated that Rosa had been adopted by another couple with the surname Wolff and that she had thereafter been known as Rosa Wolff, not Gross. Ellen shared this affidavit signed by a family friend in 1942 attesting to the fact that Rosa had been adopted (whether legally or not isn’t clear) by Esther and Herman Wolff in about 1909, the year before Gussie married Max Katz in 1910.

Affidavit of Gussie Tannenbaum about Rosa Gross Wolff

When I reexamined the marriage certificate I had for Gussie Goldfarb and Max Katz, a few things jumped out at me. One, Gussie was using her birth surname Goldfarb, not Gross, and two, she indicated that her marriage to Max was her first marriage.

Marriage record of Gussie Goldfarb and Max Katz

I began to wonder whether Gussie had ever legally married Harry Gross. I could not find a marriage record for Gussie and Harry, nor did Ellen have one. In 1906 Gussie would have only been eighteen years old when Rosa was born (although Rosa’s birth certificate above indicates that Gussie was twenty-one). Perhaps Gussie had Rosa “out of wedlock.” Maybe she and Harry had never married and that’s why Rosa was eventually given up for adoption to the Wolffs.

Although we know what happened to Gussie after Rosa went to live with the Wolffs—she married Max in 1910 and died in 1919 but had no more children—we do not know what happened to Ellen’s great-grandfather Harry Gross. Neither Ellen nor I could find any later record that we could identify as relating to Harry. The name is common enough that census records do not help, even when I tried searching by the address on the 1906 birth certificate for Rosa. The next step is to look at Ellen’s DNA matches to see if we can identify any matches that connect to Harry as opposed to her maternal matches and her matches to Gussie. We are hoping that Leah can help with that.

But from my genealogy perspective, I am thrilled that I have learned more about Gussie Goldfarb and that I have found another genetic cousin, my third cousin, once removed, Ellen. I had no idea that Gussie had any descendants, and without Leah’s help with the DNA matches, I would never have known that Gussie had a daughter Rosa and that Rosa had children and grandchildren. How wonderful that Gussie has them all as her legacy.