Genealogy Dashboard (replacing the forms and links as of 2016)
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Gary's Public Pictures including some wedding and my Bar Mitzvah albums with many family members. |
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Family Pictures by decades, starting over a hundred years ago |
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Family Tree at Geni.com. Try my Family Groups. You need to be invited to see most details, so just send me a message on the site. |
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Family Tree at MyHeritage.com (no longer being maintained). You need to be invited to see most details, so just send me a message on the site. |
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Memorials with pictures of gravestones with key dates and Jewish names of the deceased and father. |
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Records with scans of records of birth, marriage, death, and more. |
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Google map of my close family burial sites with notes on finding sites. |
In 1978, I was contacted by a distant cousin, Sam Parnes, who was gathering family tree information. We were related through Moshe Meyer Victor (born Vigdor) and Zisel. I am descended from their son Abram, and Sam is descended from their daughter Sarah Parnas. Sam is my mother's second cousin, and my second cousin once removed, not all that distant.
Sam contacted my uncle Gerry with a letter in 1996, which included a family tree focused on Moishe Meyer and Zisel Victor. Gerry passed this information on to me because I had started a family tree using information I had gathered from my grandmother, Gerry's mother, Lily.
Cousins explained in Wikipedia
While gathering pictures and building my family tree, I have encountered some odd pieces of information, which I share with you here.
Reuben's father Sam naturalized in 1913 under the name Sam Shmulik, but he signed his name in Hebrew script, so it's not clear who chose that spelling. Reuben's sisters Annie Resman (1930) and Lena Rock (1938) both naturalized under the name Shmulik. Reuben (1926) and his brother Irving "re-naturalized" under the name Issie Schmulick (1929), Louis, born in Montreal, was married witht he name Louis Schmulick-Small. Reuben's whole family changed their name from Schmulick to Small. Reuben Schmulick was mentioned in the Hertzl Girls' Club section of Canadian Jewish Review on May 21, 1926. Reuben used Small before his wedding in 1929, but we don't know if or when it became legal. Reuben's parents, Sam and Sarah (Zalman and Chaya) were buried under the name Schmulick. Marcia's medicare card used her birth name, Malca Schmulick (she refused to answer to Malca from around 10 years of age), so maybe it never was legally changed from Schmulick (see Lily's name, below), but Sheila's medicare card used Sheila Small. To help remember the spelling, note that while there are as many letters as you could imagine, none are doubled.
Abram Victor's father changed his name from Vigdor to Victor on immigration. His grave only mentions Moses Victor, and Moishe Meyer in Hebrew.
At first, one might think that the question of her name was whether it was Lillian or Lilian. Again, no doubled letters, so it was Lilian or Lily, but then again, maybe it wasn't. A 1968 passport shows her name as "Mrs. Lilian Small (nee Victor)" but there is a note on the next page indicating her legal name is "Lilian Schmulick", based on Reuben's birth name. But her 1974 passport notes "Name on certificate of birth reads Rebecca Leya Victor", and that is supported by her birth certificate. We had thought that the secret of Lily's name was that her middle name was Ruby, but it turns out that her name was not even Lilian. What's more, Lily went through life with a birth date of June 7, 1907, but that birth certificate indicates that it was the 10th of June, and that her mother was named Shlyma, not Jeannette. Her 1968 passport lists June 7th, but her 1974 passport lists June 10th.
The final word may be on her gravestone, which begins (in Hebrew) "Here lies Rebecca Leya, daughter of Abraham..." Her birth certificate, probably created three days after her birth, listed Jewish names for Lily and Jeannette.
I don't know why, but Uncle Willy's (Bill Victor's) middle name is the same as his last name. William Victor Victor.
My father-in-law's legal middle name is "H". His mother wrote on the birth certificate "Alfred H. Palmer" and that set the name, legally. The "H" was for "Hans".
My father was not given a middle name, but when he applied for a birth certificate, Quebec sent him one with Louis on it. On the other hand, Norman's birth record reads "Lewis Norman son of Issie Perlman and Bella Grief..."
My grandfather Reuben's brother, Louis, was born around 1910, in a family of moderate stature, and in a milieux where breaking six feet was unusual. Louis was six feet four inches tall. Louis Small was a giant. People would have joked about a tall Small, but he was very imposing.
My mother's cousins, sisters Shirley and Natalie Lupovich, married two brothers, Gerald and Harold Brownstein, respectively. Their combined five children have exactly the same grandparents, and are called double cousins.
