Changed My Thinking

I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 ancestors in 52 weeks challenge.

Each week’s post follows my children’s ahnentafel numbering, which determines the featured ancestor.

This ensures no one until mid-sixth generation gets left behind.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 10: Changed My Thinking

Introduction

My assigned Week 10 ancestor is Samuel Goode (born Gudelski). He married in what is now Lithuania in 1899, and he and his wife Ida had four daughters. According to family stories, the Russian army drafted Sam, and he emigrated alone to the United States.

The intention was to work, earn money, settle in, and then send for his wife and daughters, which he did five years later, in 1912. Ida and their daughters aged 10, 8, 6, and 4 arrived, but Ida was turned away due to an eye infection, something immigration officials feared could be trachoma.

But the girls were allowed in. What was a Jewish scholar – now working as a peddler – to do with four young daughters? He sent Hannah, to his married sister Yetta, and kept the other three.

We will never know Sam’s thinking, why a middle child was sent away and three were kept.

Ida snuck back into the country by 1914 and the family was reunited.  But Hannah carried that heartache throughout her life. While the rest of the family spent their lives in New York (and in one case Pennsylvania), Hannah soon went out to California, where she raised her family, grew old, and died.

Discussion

When I first heard this story, I judged Sam harshly.

How could a father send one child away and keep the others?

But age has changed my thinking. What once seemed like cruelty now feels like an impossible decision made in desperate circumstances.

I didn’t know Hannah, but I knew her sisters, and if she was like them, she didn’t let him off easy.

In the 1910 census, Aunt Yetta and her husband had five children, and by 1915 they had six. I understand they would not have been able to accommodate four young girls.

But my heart breaks for the family whose fracture never fully healed.

Figure 1 Hannah with her husband and daughter

Challenge

Has time given you perspective on the choices others have made?

AI Disclosure

This post was created by me with the help of AI tools. While AI helps organize research, the storytelling and discoveries are my own.

Next Week’s Topic: A Turning Point