San Diego: Write your life story, April 12

Writing your life story is more than listing facts and dates. If you do that, your future descendants will be bored to death.

The biggest lesson journalist Marsha Kay Seff learned from her deceased parents, Manny and Toba Seff, is “without laughter, growing old is no laughing matter." To keep her sense of humor honed she is teaching classes in “Writing Your Life Story.”

The San Diego Jewish Genealogical Society will host Seff in a program on writing the story of your life at its next meeting. It begins at 1pm, Sunday, April 12, at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla.

Seff - a reporter for 40­ years - knows the secrets of writing a life story and its milestones, and how to to highlight life's ups and down. Learn how to leave your descendants a part of you they will cherish.

A San Diego Union Tribune columnist for 24 years, Seff knows how to make a story. For 12 years, she wrote a column on aging and caregiving until she left the paper in 2008. She'll show how her years of caregiving influenced her writing.

For more information on this event and the SDJGS (founded in 1982), click here.

Geneally.com's Andrew Chapman

Here's more information on the new genealogy and family history search engine Geneally.com, that Tracing the Tribe posted on the other day. I received an answer from the man behind the site, UK genealogy journalist Andrew Chapman.

I created the site a while back - I'm a genealogy journalist in the UK; I was coming across so many different genealogy sites that I wanted to try and bring them together in an easily used way. There are other genealogy search sites, but each has different strengths and weaknesses, and they are not always simple to use in the way e.g. Google is.

Andrew has plans for adding much more data - right now at about 20,000 links - and he'd like to get that into the millions.

I also asked Andrew about his own genealogy and research.

I haven't had much time for pursuing my own genealogy in recent years as I'm constantly busy with work, but there's a long-standing family mystery about my great-grandfather's birth I hope to clear up some day - he's almost certainly descended from a family in York which ran a comb-manufacturing business (clients included royalty) for 150 years,and is believed to have been a Huguenot family originally (the name is Rougier, very rare in Britain). All of my other ancestors were very humble as far as I know!

Andrew, who lives in Oxford UK, is a professional writer/editor/designer and publishing/Internet consultant. He writes news, features and reviews for Your Family Tree magazine (UK), and has authored The A-Z of Genealogy Websites and 101 Family History Tips.

I found Andrew's possible Huguenot connection very interesting, as there is much information on Huguenot families who were really Conversos, descended from Jewish families forcibly converted during the Inquisition. Pere Bonnin's book, Sangre Judia, indicates such names as ROGET, ROGER, RAGUEL.

Don't you just love a mystery of history?

Facebook Haggadah: Writing on the Wall

Bangitout.com bills itself as the kosher comedy community.

If you haven't looked at the site in awhile, now's the time for the Facebook Haggadah by Carl Elkins of Boston. It uses many familiar Facebook features (albums, walls, friends, even a meme). Here's how it starts off - Enjoy!




Next year in ?

Read it yourself and find out.

DNA: Solving adoption mysteries

While DNA tests seem to attract family historians, there's another side to genetic genealogy - helping adoptees find their biological families.

Howard Wolinsky focused on just this issue in this online article in March's Ancestry Magazine.

Jeff Brickman always joked that he was a Scottish Jew. Really, he had no idea about his birth family’s place of origin. But thanks to a DNA test, Jeff found out that his joke answer might be right.

With blue eyes, straight, light brown hair, freckles, and light skin, Jeff Brickman never blended in at family gatherings.

Standing 5′ 8″, he towered over his dad’s family, where everyone had curly, dark brown hair and brown eyes. And in his mom’s family, the brown-eyed men stood tall at 6’ 4” and 6′ 6.”

I just don’t look like anyone in my family,” says Jeff, who grew up with a Jewish family in Phoenix and Boston. There was a reason he looked different from his parents, who were of Eastern European Jewish origin. Jeff had been adopted.

The story discusses the Y-DNA and mtDNA testing conducted at FamilyTreeDNA.com.

“I’m not looking for my parents. The whole interest for me was where I’m from genetically. Why do I look the way I do?”

In addition to confirm family relationships or learn about deep ancestry, male adoptees can find their paternal lines. Jeff had his Y-DNA (male) and mtDNA (female) tested.

According to FamilyTreeDNA's adoption expert Max Blankfeld - also VP of operations and marketing - says 30-35% of adoptees who use his service “end up finding their biological paternal line, which means that they get to know what their paternal surname would be if they were not adopted.” He stresses that the Y-DNA test is not a paternity test.

Jeff ’s testing showed 15 matches, including close ones—and some surprises.

Blankfeld told Jeff that based on Y-DNA testing, he could say “with almost 100 percent certainty that your biological paternal line was a Beall and that line was of Scottish ancestry.”

Regarding his maternal line, Blankfeld said he is probably of Jewish ancestry as the genetic signature is consistent with several people who have stated Jewish ancestry and others from Eastern Europe, and added:

Interestingly, since from the Jewish perspective the maternal line is what counts for one to be Jewish, you are not outside the group in your family get-togethers.”

Jeff's in the military and will be deloyed to Iraq. His wife is making a blanket of Beall tartan to take with him, and Jeff said he may have a tartan kipa also to combine his family traditions.

He's contacted some Bealls online and been welcomed; the story details some of those connections.

All Jeff knows is that he was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1970.; the adoption files were destroyed in a fire. He's run a Google search on Columbus Bealls but the list is long. It is possible that through this search he might find his biological father and possibly his biological mother. What would he say if he ever meets them?

“I would say to them, ‘Thank you for giving me to a wonderful family. ’ And the only question I would have is ‘What were the circumstances?’ And that’s it. I’m not looking for my parents. That’s not why I did it.”

Read the complete story at the link above.

Food: More south-of-the-border Passover fusion

Gefilte fish in Veracruz sauce (peppers, olives, capers)? Gribenes with a side of guacamole? Stews served with salsa?

It's all in Joan Nathan's great article in the New York Times about cooking Passover favorites with a Mexican twist by Mexico City native Patricia Jinich.

Jinich teaches regional cooking at Washington DC's Mexican Cultural Institute, and recently showed a large group of women at the Lubavitch Center how to cook for Passover.

Jinich grew up in Mexico, one of 40,000 to 50,000 Jews, most of them descendants of Eastern European immigrants.

(The first Jews came to Mexico from Spain during the Inquisition. “To this day,” Ms. Jinich said, “there are women in regions of Mexico who light candles on Friday night in secret.”)

Her father’s parents escaped from pogroms in Poland at the turn of the 20th century, moving to Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood, named for the Polish Jews who had settled there. Her mother’s parents fled Austria and Slovenia in the 1930s.

They, and their food, blended in.

Passover and holiday cooking were a mix of European and Mexican when Ms. Jinich was growing up: chicken soup with matzo balls, mushrooms and jalapeños; meat stews with salsa on the side; Austrian tortes made with Mexican vanilla and chocolate; and a Passover flourless chocolate pecan torte, served with berries sweetened with shaved piloncillo, raw Mexican brown sugar, and flavored with lime juice.

Yum!

She comes from a cooking family: sister Alisa Romano is a pastry chef near Miami; sister Karen Drijanski is a Vancouver caterer; while sister Sharon Drijanski in Miami has written vegetarian cookbooks.

Recipes include chicken with apricot, tamarind and chipotle sauce, spinach salad with mushrooms and hibiscus flower vinaigrette, Nana Jose's chocolate pecan cake (garnished with brown piloncillo sugar, strawberries, blackberries, lime juice and whipped cream if desired).

There's even a recipe for caramelized almonds, which is what Persian Jews call badam sukhte (burned almonds), also made by the Syrian Jewish community. Reminds me that I have to add it to my to-do list. I make it every year.

Jinich's recipe calls for maple syrup or brown sugar; we just use white sugar, but the maple syrup sounds great!

Are we genealogy groupies?

Planning a trip this summer? Since 1997, CityPass.com has been offering sightseeing booklets for specific cities. Each one includes a map, public transportation info, and insider travel tips. Updates for attractions are online and each pass is valid from April 1, 2009-March 31, 2010.

This caught my eye, as New York City was in the list of cities, and the blurb referred to "geneology groupies." (I emailed them about the spelling error; they responded quickly with a thank you.)

New York CityPass saves both time and money -- benefits that don't come easy in America's capital of finance, fashion, and ambition. Geneology groupies can now trace, to the day, the emigration of great-great grandparents, while modern art aficionados get their fill of seminal artists in digs designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Valid for nine days from first use, ticket booklets include one admission to: The Empire State Building Observatory, American Museum of Natural History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the option of either a two-hour day or cocktail cruise aboard Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises, or a visit to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island Immigration Museum. Adults, $79.00, a savings of $61.00, youth 13-17, $59.00, a savings of $42.00.

Other cities are Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Hollywood, Houston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Southern California and Toronto.

If you are planning to spend more time in Philadelphia this summer before or following the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (August 2-7), you might want to investigate the Philadelphia CityPass.

Facebook: How Haber finds family

Tracing the Tribe just spoke to Jewish genealogist Karen Haber of Israel, whose story appeared in the New York Times' Facebook story the other day.

Karen has been a Tracing the Tribe reader for eight months. Previously, she wasn't interested in genealogy, but is now using Facebook to reunite her far-flung family.

She's been busy today - a story in the Jerusalem Post, another one to be in Yediot Ahranot (Israel's largest daily, which means it may find its way to YnetNews in English), and she was also on the radio. A busy day!

There's more to her fascinating family history, which Tracing the Tribe will soon report. I suggested that she speak about her success at Jewish genealogy society meetings in Israel.

Karen is very happy that her family's story is being told, even though there were some inaccuracies reported.

The Jerusalem Post story ran today.

As the social networking Web site Facebook celebrated its fifth birthday last month, few users were as grateful for its services as Karen Haber, an Israeli and an amateur geneologist who used the site to locate dozens of family members dispersed by the Holocaust.

[One would think that after all my Jerusalem Post genealogy writing, they'd learn to spell the word correctly. Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves, along with the myth of family names changed by Ellis Island clerks!]

The 34-year-old mother of two grew up thinking she had a very small family, with just one uncle and two step-uncles in addition to her immediate family. Through the Internet alone, Haber has made contact with 60 family members (40 of them through Facebook) - all descendants of the vast and wealthy Bachenheimer dynasty now spread across the globe.

Among the relatives she's discovered is a 92-year-old fifth cousin in Israel whom she now visits once a month; a fifth cousin who is a clinical social worker in Woodstock, New York; a fourth cousin who runs an optometry shop in Zurich; and another fifth cousin who lives in Hong Kong and sells diamonds.

How did she find them? Haber's technique for finding family on Facebook is to send messages to those names that appear on her family tree of 2,500 people. Most responders have been very positive. She's been a Facebook member for a year.

"There was a person I found through Google," she said. "He and his father are big professors in the States and they were very reluctant. But when I contacted other people, like my fifth cousin in South Africa, the first note I received was, 'I love you so much!' Most [replies] are full of love and happiness."

Of course, I was particularly delighted to read about the oral history of the Bachenheimers. Do I see a DNA test in the works? Karen and I discussed this on the phone.

Haber has traced the Bachenheimers back to 1722. One ancestral story she heard from a cousin was that when the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, two brothers named Halevi fled to Germany. A few generations later, the family changed its name to Bachenheimer and Rulf, and by the end of the 19th century, the family members in Germany numbered in the hundreds. A famous relation at this time was Rabbi Isaak Rulf, who was a professor of theology and attended the first Zionist congress in 1897.

The story goes on to discuss the family's fate during the Holocaust and her maternal grandfather Kurt Wertheim's escape from Germany.

Haber's research has unearthed many surprises, the most recent being a Facebook message she received just a few days ago from an 81-year-old cousin she'd been searching for.

"He opened an account on Facebook just to reach me!" she exclaimed.

By the way, her cousin, 81, already had a Facebook account before this connection! This makes for some interesting senior demographics. I wonder how many 80+-somethings have accounts.

Home Again: A faked photo, an orphanage, Part 3

Errol Morris' investigation of a photograph found on a dead soldier at Gettysburg in 1863 continues in the third installment here. In addition to the text, it is richly illustrated with photographs and documents.

There is something magical and sad about chronicling the history of a man who went more than halfway around the world on a whaling ship and then died (presumably alone) in a small town, a couple of hundred miles from his home.

Morris writes about a fascination with last words. In this story, it is all about last images - as Amos Humiston held the photo of his children. Morris asks:

By looking at the faces of the Humiston children, we can see what Humiston was seeing as he died. Or perhaps they can provide a glimpse of what was in his mind. Does linking his experiences with ours allow us to better know him or only to imagine ourselves as him?

As most genealogists and family historians know - and Morris reminds us - most historical mysteries stay in that state. What is fascinating is that although author Mark Dunkelman could learn so much about this one soldier and his family, there are so many about whom nothing is known.

Dunkelman writes about two cases of soldiers found on the same battlefield and how they were identified.

A Pennsylvanian was identified by a silver medal found clutched in his hand. Another soldier was found missing his hat, shoes, and socks, but inside one of his pockets the burial squad found a gold locket with a photograph of his wife or sweetheart, along with her name and address.

Others were identified by a letter, photo, diary, or other personal item. But it appears no other case resulted in such a major story.

Even before the days of PhotoShop, photos were altered. Through family members, Dunkelman found photos of Humiston before the war; one with a beard, one without, which Bourns had obtained from the widow. Dunkelman says Bourns wanted to issue a photo of him as a soldier, so he had a photo retouched, adding a beard and uniform. The possible reasons are revealed.

The carte-de-viste was sold and funds went to the Orphan's Homestead as explained on the back of the photo. Bourns wanted to raise money for an orphanage for the children of deceased soldiers. The article goes on to provide information on the Homestead Association, incorporated in 1866, three following Humiston's death. Bourns was the general secretary, while Humiston's widow Philinda was a housekeeper and the three children lived at the Homestead.

Philinda eventually married an older man in 1869, and sent for the children. Here, according to the author, the story takes a sinister turn. Stay tuned for Part 4.

Read the complete article at the link above and view the photographs and documents.