Tag Archives: blog matters

What’s next?

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I am currently waiting for three more documents that I am hoping will provide some clues to where our family lived in Galicia: Hyman and Sophie’s marriage certificate, Tilly’s death certificate, and Max’s naturalization papers. It may be quite a while before I get these three documents since (1) the FHL is currently not processing requests because it is upgrading its system; (2) I just ordered Tilly’s death certificate from NYC, and that will take at least a few weeks, and (3) USCIS estimates a 90 day wait for naturalization records, and I only made that request four weeks ago.  Thus, I may not have any new information for quite a while. From my experience with marriage and death certificates, I am not too hopeful that I will get anything too helpful from the first two; I have no idea what the naturalization papers may provide, but they may be our best chance for finding another clue as to the hometown.  I remain determined to find the answer to the question of where our family lived.

I also may not soon have an answer for the other big question: are we related to the Brotmanville Brotmans, and if so, how? Without some way to learn more about Moses Brotman’s parents, I can’t make a connection between Moses and Joseph. Even though I was able to find two of Moses’ living descendants, neither can answer any questions about his parents, and the other living descendants have been unwilling to respond to my inquiries.  To be honest, I doubt they would have that information anyway.

To answer either of these questions will require access to documents from Galicia that date back before 1890, documents that are obviously not in English.  Although many Galician records exist and are indexed on various websites, I have not been able yet to find anything that relates to our ancestors or Moses’ Brotman’s ancestors.  I need more help, more training, more experience before I can do that effectively.  I will be consulting with some others with more experience to see how to get the education I need. I have just joined a Yahoo Group for people interested in genealogy research in the Tarnozbreg region of Poland, which is where Dzikow is located, the town I think may be the most likely place our family lived in Galicia. I just have to be patient and willing to work hard, and I believe I will find the answers to these questions.

That does not mean that there is nothing to do until then.  There is still a lot to do to make the blog a real resource for our family and for future generations.  I need your help for that.  Yes, more photos and documents would be great.  But I’ve been thinking that it would also be nice to add more personal information about some of the family members I never knew. I’ve added some personal touches to the descriptions of my grandparents, aunt and uncle, but I didn’t know Abraham, Max, Hyman, Tilly or any of their children.  I need help from the rest of you to add a personal dimension to their portraits. Right now I am working on a portrait of Tilly and her life, for example.  Even a brief description of a person’s career, interests, or personality will add some “flesh” to the facts and dates that are currently reported on the blog pages. Are any of you are interested in writing either a “guest post” or in providing a few words to add to the page about your parents or grandparents?  What would you like future generations of Brotmans to know about their ancestors?

Family Trees: Blog Tip

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It seems that some people are having trouble locating the family trees on the blog.  If you click [1]on the words “Joseph’s Descendants: Family Trees” near the top of the page (under the blog title), a page will open that has a list of family trees. There is one for Joseph, which goes only to the third generation (Joseph’s grandchildren).  Then there are separate trees for each of Joseph’s children, following through a few more generations.  The trees are all quite large, so you will need to zoom in to read the names, but then you can move around that page to see the various relationships.  You can also save the trees to your own computer.  They are in PDF format.

Hope that helps.

[1] If you just let your mouse hover over those words, a dropdown menu displays the names of Joseph’s seven children.  If you click on one of those names, it will open that person’s page.  You need to click on “Joseph’s Descendants: Family Trees” to open the family tree page.

Blog Updates

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I’ve made some changes to the blog that will hopefully make it easier to find subjects discussed here.  For example, I’ve added a Search Box on the sidebar at the bottom.  Now if you want to search for specific people, for example, put their name in and all the pages or posts where their name is mentioned will pop up.

Also, I’ve arranged the posts into categories and added a menu for those categories.  So, for example, if you want to see all posts in the category of Family Information and Updates, just click on that category in the menu, and all posts in that category will be listed on the page.

I am still learning how to do this (thank you again, Judy, for getting me started!), so I will continue to fiddle with this.  I am open to suggestions—just add your thoughts in the comments.  I’d prefer receiving comments about the blog on the blog rather than in my email because my email box gets so overloaded with all the research I am doing that sometimes I lose track of what’s where!

Thanks!

Amy

While we are waiting….

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I am in a holding pattern right now, waiting for some more documents and also waiting to talk with Elaine Ashin, who is Moses Brotman’s granddaughter (of the Brotmanville clan). I am also still working to find some way to determine our ancestral home town in Galicia. It’s frustrating sometimes, waiting to find more information, but it has always been worth it once it arrives.

So while we’re waiting, please consider sending in some pictures, old or new, of your family members. We created a new page for the “Newer Generations” that would include both current and older pictures of any of us—including our children, grandchildren, parents, etc.

It would also be nice to add some pictures to the pages set aside for the first, second and third generations. If you have lots of pictures to add, that’s great and easily done; Judy and I each compiled a Picasa online album of older pictures of our families and created links to those albums on the Max page and the Gussie page (see the bottom of each page); it would be nice to do that for Abraham, Hyman and Tilly also. If you want me to scan pictures for you, I’d be happy to do that also.

Also, I think it would be nice to add some personal recollections to the blog—your memories or feelings about your grandparents. I’ve done some of that on Gussie’s page, and some of her other grandchildren have added comments with their stories. It would be great to do that for Abraham, Max, Hyman, and Tilly also. Since I didn’t know any of them, I can’t do it without your help. So feel free to add comments on the blog, and then I can incorporate some of that to the pages themselves.

Meanwhile, I will keep you all updated about any new things I learn.

Oh, and GO SOX!

Thanks for the feedback!

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Thanks to all for the feedback and for the new pictures, corrections, and information.  I am trying to keep up with it, but if I forget, please remind me.

A few things: I am trying to be sensitive to privacy concerns.  For example, I wasn’t sure people wanted me to list their birthdays, spouse’s names, or other identifying information about anyone living.  Thus, I deleted all the information and only listed first names of the children and most of the living descendants.

Instead of the document that had included a lot of that information, I have posted a set of family trees.  You can find them if you click on Joseph’s Descendants: Family Trees.  These were not created by me directly, but by software that works with ancestry.com  Although I can fix errors in names and add and delete people through the ancestry.com site, I cannot rearrange people on the trees.  I know some of it is odd: first husbands listed after second husbands, for example.  Not my fault! So I can either leave the trees or delete them.  I can either leave the information on the pages incomplete or add every bit of information you want.  But I won’t do it unless you tell me you want me to.  

One more tip: click on the photos to zoom in and even zoom in again.  It’s great to be able to see old photos that were 3 inches or so enlarged enough to see more clearly.

That’s it for now.  Thanks again for your feedback.

Amy

What’s here, what’s new, what’s next

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First, thank you, Judy, for setting up the blog and putting up with all my confusion and questions as I struggled to figure out how to post pictures, text and documents here.  I still am not very good at this, and I am still trying to figure out how to move pictures around and to make things look better, but I decided that if I wait until it is perfect, no one will ever see it.

The blog is organized into separate pages: one for Joseph and Bessie and their story, documents and pictures, and then separate pages for each of the children we know of to this point: Max. Herman, Tilly, Gussie, Frieda and Sam.  On each page there are pictures and documents relating to that child and his/her descendants.  Obviously, I have the most pictures of Gussie’s line, but I am hoping that the rest of you will supply pictures of your grandparents, parents, siblings, children, etc.  I haven’t finished posting all I have for Gussie, but I wanted to get this out.

As for what’s next, I am still working to find out the name of the towns where Joseph and Bessie came from.  We know that they were cousins and likely did not live in the same town, but aside from one reference on Herman’s naturalization application to “Jeekief,” we have no information about where they lived in Galicia.

I also am still trying to determine whether we have a direct relation to the Brotmans of Brotmanville, NJ, or to Abraham Brotman of Brooklyn, for whom Max was the witness on his naturalization papers.

I have tried to protect the privacy of anyone living, so I have left it to you to identify your birthdates, your spouses, your children, grandchildren, etc., more specifically than I have.

Please give feedback! You can post comments or you can email me or Judy directly if you have pictures or documents to post.

ENJOY! I will post more about my research and what this process has been like for me.  I also still hope to meet some of my long lost cousins some time before too long.

Amy