I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 24: Possibilities
Introduction
My Week 24 ancestor is Michael Joseph Anderson.
My Irish-born, US-emigrated ancestors seem to have a common thread: the possibilities in front of them. There were no streets of gold for them, but each generation had a better time of it than the last.
Discussion
Michael Joseph Anderson was born in 1874 in Staten Island, New York, as the second child to Irish immigrants Michael Anderson and Theresa Kilkenny. The children came every two years or so, as was common in families of the time, and Mom was pregnant with her seventh when Dad, a laborer, died at 31 of “Congestion of the Brain.”
The younger Michael’s mom worked hard to keep the family together, and she apparently succeeded. In the 1900 census she was a laundress, living with her younger children and with or next to a married daughter. When she died, the funeral home records note that her son paid her funeral expenses. Clearly the family remained tight-knit, and Theresa was successful in endowing her children with the gift of possibilities.
Michael married and had three children, working on the docks. His wife Anna Driskol died of kidney disease when the youngest child was 10, and with family help, Michael was able to keep the family together, until his own death two years later, just as his mother had done. He saw the possibility of stable family life despite challenges, and grabbed it.
Two of the three children, and probably all three, lived what might be considered a lower middle class life. It may not sound dramatic on paper. But after early deaths, dock work, laundry work, and immigrant uncertainty, even a modestly stable life represented something real: a widening of the road for the next generation. So it took a few generations, but the possibilities envisioned by our first generation ancestors were realized.
Challenge
It is harder these days to “work your way up in the world.” What can we do to help others along their journey? My chosen assistance is in education. But for you, the – excuse me – possibilities – are endless.
Michael Joseph Anderson and his three children: Frances, Edward, and Theresa, 1917.
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.
I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: June 6, 2026
Prompt: “The life of every person has events and decisions that have a risk factor that can significantly affect their life. Describe a risk that one of your ancestors made that affected their life. How did it all turn out?”
Introduction
Don’t we all have those pivotal moments in life — a fork in the road where the next step is anything but certain? Sometimes we recognize the risk at the time. Sometimes we only see it later, when we understand how much changed because someone was brave, desperate, hopeful, or simply willing to try.
My grandfather Gordon West faced that kind of moment during the Depression. He had been a theater organist during the silent-film era, but the rise of “talkies” changed the industry almost overnight. His risk was not dramatic in the movie sense, but it was life-changing: he had to leave familiar work, learn a new trade, and eventually go far from home to find employment.
Discussion
Gordon West was a successful organist at a movie theater when motion pictures were silent. But after the release of “The Jazz Singer” in 1927, “talkies” exploded in popularity and by 1930, “the number of talkies released matched the number of silent films.” [1]
Unfortunately, this coincided with the Depression, not a great time for Grandpa to be put out of work. He worked for free for a friend who ran a newspaper to learn the trade, and then moved on. He lived in Northwest Ohio and tried to find work in Detroit, but apparently couldn’t, so he ended up in New York City. I have no idea what gave him the courage to do this – there is no indication whatsoever that anyone he knew was there. He gained a position at the Staten Island Advance, where he worked as a linotype operator for 40 years until retirement.
In New York, he stayed at a boarding house whose proprietress had a niece she wanted him to meet. That niece was my grandmother.
Grandpa was born and lived in a town with a population under 1000. His father had lived in that town his entire life. How daring it must have been of Grandpa to go to New York City, of all places!
I hope that I take the necessary bold moves when needed as well.
p.s. Just asked my uncle – Grandpa’s son – about what might have brought Grandpa to New York specifically, and he added some interesting tidbits. Apparently Grandpa got the offer for the Staten Island Advance while he was in Ohio, so there must have been some sort of professional connection. “He was fishing when the offer came and a cousin had to run down to the river to get him. He was on the train that evening.”
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.
I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 23: A Place That Matters
Introduction
My Week 23 ancestor is Khana Rachkovski.
Discussion
Khana Rachkovski was born about 1828–1833 in what appears in the records as Veisiejai, Seinai, Suwalki. By 1864 she had married Mortkhel Rabinowitz. Eleven children are linked to them in the documents, most of them born in Veisiejai, and Khana died in 1901 at age 67 in Seirijai, Sejny, Suwalki.
At first glance, those place names can feel like a tangle: Veisiejai, Seirijai, Seinai, Sejny, Suwalki. But they are not all equivalent places. Veisiejai and Seirijai were the towns. Seinai/Sejny was the district or county name. Suwałki was the larger province or gubernia. In other words, Khana was not moving from one distant world to another. Her life seems to have unfolded within a small regional network in what is now southern Lithuania, near the present-day Polish border.
That matters because place names in genealogy can sometimes flatten a life instead of revealing it. “Suwalki” can sound like a single location, but for Khana it was more like a landscape: villages and market towns, Jewish communities, changing record languages, and borders that shifted around families who may not have moved very far at all.
Veisiejai and Seirijai were close — roughly ten miles apart as the crow flies. Close enough that families may have known one another across town lines. Close enough for marriage networks, market days, visits, and movement between households. Close enough that Khana’s death in Seirijai does not necessarily suggest a dramatic migration, but perhaps the later chapter of a life still rooted in the same local world.
The names themselves tell part of the story. Veisiejai also appears as Wiejsieje in Polish and Vishai/Vishey in Yiddish. Seirijai appears as Sereje in Polish and Serei in Yiddish. The records changed language during Khana’s lifetime, and the same place could wear different names depending on who wrote it down. That is one of the quiet challenges of researching families from this region: the ancestor stayed in place, but the paperwork did not.
For me, this makes Veisiejai matter not just as a birthplace, but as an anchor. It is the place that holds Khana’s beginnings, her marriage, and the births of most of her children. Seirijai, nearby, holds the end of her documented life. Between those two towns is not a long journey on a map, but it may contain nearly all of what the records allow me to know about her world.
The factual place framework here is supported by JewishGen’s listings for Veisiejai and Seirijai, which place both towns in Sejny/Seinai and Suwałki in the 1900-era records; JewishGen gives Veisiejai as 14 miles east of Sejny and Seirijai as 21 miles east-northeast of Sejny. The broader JewishGen Communities Database also lists Veisiejai and Seirijai under Sejny district and Suwałki province in the Russian Empire.
ChatGPT, 02Jun2026
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.
I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 22: A Name With Meaning
Introduction
My Week 22 ancestor is Mortkhel Rabinowitz.
Discussion
Both of my mother-in-law’s grandfathers were named Mordechai, or something very close to it. Had they both immigrated to the United States, that might have been confusing. But as far as I know, she never knew either of them.
I know almost nothing about Mortkhel as a person, but his name gives me one small way to think about the role he may have played in his family.
Mortkhel appears to be a Yiddish or regional form of Mordechai/Mordecai, the biblical name of Esther’s cousin and guardian in the Book of Esther. That biblical connection is the part of the name that caught my attention.
Mortkhel Rabinowitz was born about 1828. I know his father was Rubin, but no further information about his ancestry has been located. Birth records from this period are sparse, and his has not been located. He married Khana Rotovsky by 1864, when their first known child was born, and perhaps earlier. The records place the family in Veisiejai, then part of the Sejny district in Suwalki gubernia.
What I know of Mortkhel comes mostly through the records of his family. Eleven children have been tentatively identified. He was described as a lake owner and land tenant in his children’s birth records, suggesting he had property and agricultural interests in the area.
His wife Khana died on January 17, 1901, leaving Mortkhel a widower at 73. No records of him have been identified after that.
I have not found grandchildren named after him, perhaps because he lived long enough that the tradition of not naming children after living relatives would have delayed that possibility.
The name does not literally mean “guardian,” as far as I can tell. But the biblical Mordecai is remembered as Esther’s cousin and protector, the man who raised her after her parents died. That makes me look at “my” Mortkhel a little differently. The records do not give me his voice, his personality, or even the end of his story. They give me land, a lake, a wife, and eleven children linked to him through the records. Perhaps that is its own kind of meaning: a man glimpsed mostly through the family he helped anchor.
Did Mortkhel’s name die with him? Perhaps. I have not yet found grandchildren named after him, and if he lived longer than I can currently document, that may be one reason. But names have a way of lingering even when they disappear from the records. Mortkhel’s name leads me back to Mordecai, to guardianship, and to the quieter question of what it meant to hold a family together in nineteenth-century Suwalki. That makes his eleven children worth following—not only to see whether the name continued, but to understand what kind of family story grew from him.
ChatGPT, 02Jun2026
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.
I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: May 30, 2026
Prompt: “How did you observe or celebrate the Bicentennial of America’s Founding on 4 July 1976? What were you doing on that day? Did you or your family attend any special events to mark America’s 200th birthday?”
Introduction
I was a slip of a girl in 1976! My parents were divorcing, and my father was working hard to maintain a relationship from the hundreds of miles away that our mother had moved us.
Discussion
In a difficult season for our family, the Bicentennial became one of the threads Dad used to keep us connected. New York City was at the center of some spectacular celebrations, and he seemed determined that we would feel included, even from hundreds of miles away.
Dad lived in New York City and was very excited to share its Bicentennial happenings with us.
On July 4, 1976, New York Harbor hosted the largest naval and sailing display in city history to celebrate the American Bicentennial. The event, known as Operation Sail (OpSail), featured a grand parade of more than 200 vessels, including 16 majestic tall ships from 14 nations. Source
Dad delighted in sending newspaper articles of the buildup and the event itself, and even at my young age, I was awed and amazed about how NYC seemed to be pulling out all stops to celebrate our 200th birthday.
Dad’s excitement was contagious. Although I have no clear memory of July 4, 1976 itself, I remember the clippings, the stamps, the coins, and the sense that New York City was pulling out all the stops. More than anything, I remember a man trying to stay connected with his long-distance daughters.
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.
I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: May 23, 2026
Prompt: “Are there ancestor’s occupations that you know nothing about? Pick a great-grandparent or earlier ancestor who held an unfamiliar job (cooper, cordwainer, hostler, etc.). Look it up and write a short description of what their daily work life might have been like.”
Introduction
Many of us are familiar with the phrase “mad as a hatter,” especially through the Mad Hatter of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The phrase itself predates Carroll, but its association with hatmaking has a grim historical explanation: mercury used in producing felt hats could poison those who worked with it. So, it was a little disturbing to learn that my ancestor, Henry Denny (1758–1839), was identified as a “hatter” in a 1795 land indenture.
But why did hatmakers have this reputation? While there are many theories, I rather believe that the mercury used in producing felt for hats poisoned those who used it. So, it was a little disturbing to learn that my ancestor, Henry Denny (1758-1839) was a “hatter” in a 1795 land indenture.
Discussion
Henry Denny left a lot of documentation around his Revolutionary War service due to his attempts to obtain a pension. He also interacted in the Dutch Reformed Church, as evidenced by the baptisms of his children and by his second marriage. He bought and sold land in New York and New Jersey. Yet he left relatively little documentation for his occupation.
He lived in Bergen County, New Jersey, where he served in the militia in the Revolution and married during the war. He and his wife Mary Young had children there and moved to New York City around the time the last child Helen was born (1795), for reasons unknown. From city directories, I see that by 1795 he had become a tavern keeper who also ran a boarding house starting 1795.
For the record, I have no indication that Henry was affected by mercury poisoning in any way; to the contrary, his pension affidavits indicate a man who retained all his faculties into his ninth decade.
Since the records do not describe Henry’s actual shop or daily routine, I asked ChatGPT for a historically informed sketch of what a hatter’s working life in Hackensack around 1795 might have looked like:
What would working life have been for a hatter in Hackensack, New Jersey, around 1795?
The LLM responded that “Around 1795, a hatter in Hackensack worked at the edge of town and country. Hackensack was a small county-seat village, tied to surrounding farms, courthouse business, taverns, stage routes, and the Hackensack River trade with New York. In a modest shop, perhaps near his home, the hatter turned wool and animal fur into felt hats by dampening, pressing, heating, shaping, stiffening, dyeing, blocking, trimming, and finishing them for local customers. His work served farmers, tradesmen, travelers, and men doing business at the county seat. A fine hat could signal respectability, while a cheaper or repaired hat met everyday needs. The trade required skill and patience, but the shop was likely hot, wet, dusty, smelly, and potentially hazardous if mercury-treated fur was used. In Hackensack, he was probably not a factory worker but a village craftsman: part manufacturer, part repairman, part shopkeeper, and part participant in the town’s web of credit, trade, and community life.”
I may never know why Henry Denny left the occupation behind, but I am enriched by having learned about how he supported his family.
AI Disclosure
This post was written by me with the help of AI tools for organization and editing. The memories, family details, and reflections are my own.
I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 21: An Unexpected Strength
Introduction
My Week 21 ancestor is Cywa “Sylvia” Bachrach.
As with her husband, Mordecai Gudelski, I never knew anyone who knew Sylvia, my husband’s great grandmother. But it’s clear to this generation that she left a lasting impression on her descendants.
When I first thought about “unexpected strength,” I imagined something visible: a crisis faced, a hardship overcome, a bold decision preserved in the records. But Cywa’s strength seems to have been quieter than that. It appears in what her children carried with them — not just across the ocean, but into the names they gave their own daughters.
Discussion
The records are sparse when it comes to Cywa. Although I have located birth records for some of her siblings, I have not yet found hers. What I do know is that she married Mordecai Gudelski in 1855 in Suwałki, Congress Poland, when they were both 19 years old.
She died in Suwałki in 1900.
Sylvia had nine children that I know of, and I’ve tracked six of them emigrating, likely pushed by the pressures many Jewish families faced in the Russian Empire: violence, instability, military conscription, and limited opportunity. What stands out to me is that of the six children I’ve been able to track, five named daughters Sylvia. (Yes, we always have to clarify when talking about “Cousin Sylvia.”)
Cywa must have had a tremendous impact on her children for them to honor her so, especially since I have not seen the same naming pattern for their father. I keep coming back to those daughters named Sylvia. In a family scattered by emigration, distance, and uncertainty, her name became a kind of thread — carried across oceans and into the next generation.
How hard it must have been to bid goodbye to child after child as they left for another continent, knowing she would likely never see them again. Cywa’s strength may not appear in the records as a bold public act. It may have looked quieter than that: raising children, surviving uncertainty, and letting them go when leaving may have been their best chance.
I cannot prove that every daughter named Sylvia was named directly for her, but the pattern is hard to ignore. Her name kept reappearing. That feels like its own kind of testimony.
We may not know much about Cywa “Sylvia” Bachrach’s voice, personality, or daily life. But her children remembered her. They carried her name forward. And sometimes, in genealogy, that is where strength reveals itself — not in what was written down, but in what a family refused to forget.
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.
I’ve adapted Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. Each week I follow my children’s ahnentafel numbering to select the featured ancestor, ensuring no one through the mid–sixth generation is left behind.
52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks: 2026 Week 20: At the Cemetery
Introduction
My Week 20 ancestor is Szmujl/o Morthaj “Mordecai” Gudelski.
Discussion
I was lucky enough to find Mordechai’s death record indexed in LitvakSIG (bless them, and yes I donated!), which also linked to the actual record in the Polish State Archives!
Here is the index (he is the second hit; his wife is the first):
That Polish State Archive link brings me to the film scan, and I scroll through to deaths and then record 48, to find:
I got Russian translation help (Suwalki was Russian-occupied at that time) from some very generous volunteers:
So thanks to the detailed record – the parents, occupation, and location all jibe with what I expected – I now know I have precise death info.
But to the prompt – where was he buried?
To that, I’ll turn to AI: I opened up Gemini and asked,
A Jewish relative died in September 1914, in Suwalki town, Suwalki Uyezd, and Suwalki Gubernia. Where might he have been buried?
The LLM gave me very good information, broken down by burial site, surviving documentation, and historical context, all of which I’ve summarized below. Gemini suggested, with apparent confidence, that the most likely burial place was “Suwałki Jewish Cemetery (ul. Zarzecze), which was the primary and active burial ground for the Jewish community of the town and surrounding uyezd (district) at that time.”
Gemini suggested that Mordechai was most likely buried in the Suwałki Jewish Cemetery on ul. Zarzecze, the primary Jewish cemetery serving the town and district at the time. It also cautioned that the cemetery was badly damaged during World War II, with many matzevot removed or reused, though some fragments were later recovered and preserved in lapidarium walls. That answer gave me both hope and a reality check: I may never find his exact grave, but I may have found the place where he was laid to rest.
It suggested some archival organizations with which to follow up: JRI-Poland, The State Archives in Suwałki, and The Lithuanian State Historical Archives. After my next prompt, it also gave more specific info: links to the cemetery itself, and some key organizations involved in it: The Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland (FODŻ), Virtual Shtetl / POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, The State Archives in Suwałki (Archiwum Państwowe w Suwałkach), and Local Municipal and Historical Societies.
Finally, it offered help drafting emails to any of these organizations.
If it wasn’t past my bedtime (and this blog remaining to be polished and posted), I would go to another LLM for its opinion, and potentially a third LLM to ask it to compare the answers. (Try it, I promise it’s fun!)
I may never find Mordechai’s exact grave. But knowing that there was likely one cemetery serving his community in Suwałki gives me something tangible: a place to imagine, a place to research, and maybe someday, a place to visit. For now, that feels like a meaningful step closer.
And finally, a super cool photo of the man in question (thanks to cousin Robert):
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.
I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: May 16, 2026
Prompt: “Determine where your ancestral families were in May 1876 — 150 years ago. List them, their family members, their birth years, and their residence location (as close as possible).”
Introduction
150 years ago, for me, means that no one I knew was alive then. Certainly it’s possible but it didn’t happen in my case. So this location-gathering is all evidence-based.
What surprised me as I worked through the list was how scattered they already were. Some families were still in long-familiar places in Suwałki, Staten Island, Morris County, or Ohio. Others were already in motion, recently arrived, orphaned, widowed, separated, or just beginning the moves that would shape the next generation. Looking at May 1876 this way turns a date on the calendar into a family map.
The numbers used will be my children’s ahenentafel numbers.
Discussion
11. Ida Rabinowitz was born as Khaya Rabinovich in 1872 in Vyskie, Seiny, Suwalki (now in Lithuania) to a trader family headed by Mortkhel Rabinovich and Khana Rachkovski (birth record dated 1875), though she later claimed to be born in 1879, consistently shaving seven years off her age. (She married a man born in 1878.) She is the sixth known child, preceded by siblings Sora Leya, Avrum, Shimon, Aron Szimel, and Traina.
16. Bernat Birnbaum (also known as Joe, Bernard) was born in Czechoslovakia. He married FANNY STEINBERG before 1885, as their son Samuel was born in that year. So in May 1876 he was presumably a young man in Czechoslovakia.
17. Fanny Steinbergwas born perhaps in Czechoslovakia. She married BERNARD BIRNBAUM (also known as Joe, Bernat) before 1885, as their son Samuel was born in that year.
18. Joseph Frank was born in April 1852 in Russia. He immigrated to the United States in December 1872 and settled in Manhattan, New York, where he remained for the rest of his life. I have not located him in the United States prior to 1887, so cannot confidently say where he was in May 1876. He was not with family that I know about.
19. Jennie (Sheindel) Felder was born on December 20, 1859, in Austria-Hungary. She emigrated about 1886, so in May 1876 would have been in Austria-Hungary, I suppose with her parents Joseph Felder and Rosie.
20. Szmujl/o Morthaj “Mordecai” Gudelski was born June 20, 1837, in Suwalki, Congress Poland. He married Cywa ‘Sylvia’ Bachrach in 1855 in Suwalki when both were 19 years old. By 1875, they had several children born Suwalki: Yochevet, Kuna, Mowsza Lejba, Abraham, Berko, and Szepszel.
21. Cywa “Sylvia” Bachrach was born in 1835, probably in Suwalki, and was having children with 20. Mordecai Gudelski above in 1875.
22. Mortkhel Rabinowitz and 23. Khana Rachkovski. Mortkhel was born about 1828 and Khana about 1828-1833. They married by 1864 when their first child was born. They lived in Veisiejai, Sejny, Suwalki, in 1864.
24. Michael Joseph Anderson was born on April 20, 1874, in Staten Island, Richmond, NY. He lived with his parents Michael Anderson and Theresa Kilkenny Anderson, and his younger sister Theresa, in 1876, his older sister Mary Ann having died the prior year.
28. Adam Grant West was born on May 2, 1866, in Liberty Center, Henry County, Ohio, the seventh child to parents John Thomas West and Patience Spiegle.
29. Charlotte Mae DuShannon had been orphaned and in 1876 was living in the Bridgeport (Connecticut) Protestant Orphan Asylum when Chester and Mary Peters assumed her guardianship.
40. Manel Nochim Gudelski was born ca. 1798-1807. He married 41. Rejza Hirszowna, born about 1807. They were living in Suwalki in 1873, and she died a widow in 1885.
43. Rochla was born about 1799-1800, and married Mowsza Bachrach. She died 8 April 1867 in Suwałki.
44. Rubin Rabinovich, born ca 1804 probably in or near Dusnica (Dusznycia), gm Dumble, near Sejny, Suwałki Governorate — a small rural settlement in what is now Podlaskie Voivodeship, Poland, near the Lithuanian border. He died on May 2, 1877, at age 73, in Dusnitse village, Krasnovo area, Sejny, Suwalki, so I have to assume he was in the area in 1865.
48. Michael Anderson had married 49. Theresa Kilkenny and had three children by 1876. They were living in Staten Island, Richmond County, New York.
50. Andrew Driskol was probably living with his wife 51. Malvina Hendel in Manhattan as recent immigrants, with their children, Edward, Edith (if still alive at that time), and Mary.
52. William Carey and his wife 53. Mary C. Keoghan were newly naturalized in Morris County, New Jersey, with then-children James, Mary, William, John, Andrew, and Catherine. William worked for the railroad.
54. James Hart was a boy with his parents John Hart and Johanna Dobbins in 1876, in Hibernia, Morris County, New Jersey. He had older siblings Timothy and Michael, and younger siblings at that time Mary, unknown, John, and Margaret.
55. Bridget Agnes Kearney was a young woman soon to marry, with her father Matthew Kearney, in Randolph, Morris County, NJ. Her mother Eliza Culligan may or may not have been alive during 1876.
56. John Thomas West Sr. and his wife 57. Patience Spiegle were living in Liberty Center, Henry County, Ohio, in 1876, with or recently split from his father John West. Their children in 1876 were Mary Ann, John Jr., Fannie, Adam, Eva, and Wilbur.
60. Henry Mackey was in Buffalo, Erie, New York in 1876 with his parents William Mackey and Ann Dolan, as well as siblings Edward, John, Margaret, and Mary Ann. He may well have been dating the woman he’d marry the following year.
61. Ellen McCourt was living with her father Patrick McCourt in the 1875 census, and presumably still in 1876, and with her widowed sister and two niblings.
62. Cornelius Britton was married to his first wife Frances Housman in 1876, and they were living in Brooklyn, New York and their first two sons Frank and Willard.
63. Alice Matilda Smith was separated from her first husband, living with her parents Jason Smith and Mary Denny in Staten Island, and her child Louis Seawood.
108. John Hart and his wife 109. Johanna Dobbins were living in Hibernia, Morris, NJ with their children Timothy, Michael, James, Mary, unknown, John, and Margaret. He was recently naturalized and worked as a miner.
110. Matthew Kearney was with one of his wives or between them, a miner in Randolph, Morris, NJ, and his children Thomas, Bridget, Martha, John, Ann, and Matthew.
112. John B. West was living in Liberty Center, Henry County, OH. He was widowed and had been living with son John and family but I believe had moved out due to differences between them by then. He died later that year, never having reconciled with that son.
120. William Mackey was living in Buffalo, Erie, New York, with his wife 121. Ann Dolan. Their children Edward and Henry were still at home in 1875.
122. Patrick McCourt was perhaps living with his widowed daughter Mary in 1876. He would soon go into an old age asylum and die soon after.
124. Cornelius Britton and his wife 125. Harriet Barker were living in Staten Island, their children having flown the nest, though they were only 46 and 42, he working as a carpenter.
126. Jason M. Smith and his wife 127. Mary Catherine Denny were also living in Staten Island.
218. Michael Dobbins and his wife 219. Mary Malone had settled in Shawnee, Wyandotte, Kansas, by 1876. Their immigration path had brought them from Ireland via New Jersey (where their daughter Johanna and another daughter Margaret remained).
250. Stephen Barker and his wife 251. Mary Miller were living in Manhattan, either on Rivington or Hudson streets.
Those are all of my children’s ancestors known or believed to be alive in May 1876. Some locations are documented, some are carefully inferred, and a few remain frustratingly uncertain. But taken together, they offer a remarkable snapshot: families rooted in old communities, immigrants beginning again, children growing up in households that would soon change, and ancestors whose paths were slowly converging toward the people we would eventually know as family.
A hand turns the worn pages of an 1876 calendar showing May and June months.
ChatGPT, 19May2026
AI Disclosure
This post was written by me with the help of AI tools for organization and editing. The memories, family details, and reflections are my own.
I’m having some Saturday Night Genealogy Fun (#SNGF), with help from Randy Seaver and his prompts! Feel free to join in.
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: May 9, 2026
Prompt: “What automobile models did your ancestors have? Pick an ancestor and share something about their cars.”
Introduction
My father Bob Anderson’s first car after the divorce needed to be a cheap workhorse, so he could travel hundreds of miles every other weekend for custodial time (then called visitation), and he had little cash to spare. He found a yellow/orange two-door Vega. It looked very much like this one except orange with a black horizontal stripe.
Figure 1 A Chevrolet Vega similar to Dad’s, though his was more orange and had a black horizontal stripe.
Discussion
There were three of us, ages 3-8, and we sat in the backseat (no child seat laws at that time) because the front seat had no seat belts, but the back seat did. Dad used a CB radio much like I use Waze now but for two-way communication. With Citizens Band, everyone chose a nickname or handle, and Dad was Bumblebee, because of the car. (Later he got a silver car and was happy to change his handle to Silver Shadow.)
Those car trips went on for a decade. I’m amazed Dad was able to do it. Later, Dad was so burned out from driving, and I generally handled the long-ish trips. But I have very fond memories in that car and the ones that followed (anybody remember the K-cars?) because they enabled family time.
A “Weekend Fathers” newspaper article featuring Dad and one of the cars that followed the Vega. Seeing Dad described that way in print still stops me, because those exhausting weekends were not abstract to us. They were how he stayed present.
Looking back, those cars were never just transportation. They were how Dad kept showing up, one long weekend drive at a time. 10-4, Bumblebee.
AI Disclosure
This post was written by me with the help of AI tools for organization and editing. The memories, family details, and reflections are my own.
The Ancestor Whisperer 