I've been tracing my family tree for the better part of the last 10 years. It has been one of the few things that I've felt passion about and that has truly absorbed my attention. I've had some remarkable successes; I've discovered the names of ancestral shtetls lost to the living members of my family, recreated details of my ancestor's siblings' lives a century after their passings, and reconnected with cousins several generations after family rifts. I've put a website together to share my findings with my family--which I promise to update eventually!
One way to find other people who may be distant relations is to post your information to a common database. The JewishGen Family Finder is one such repository that focuses on, well, Jewish Genealogy. It is a family tree "net." Because I have a dozen or so postings there (e.g., Name: Broitman; Place: Savran, Ukraine), I get e-mails about twice a month from people asking if I could be related to them. Most of the time the answer is "I don't see a definite connection, but I'll keep your family's information in mind as I continue my research."
A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from someone asking if we were related, and the answer was Yes! My great-grandfather, Meyer Golder, immigrated from Bivolari, Romania--near Iasi--around 1912. He was one of five brothers, three of whom emigrated to the US. The person who contacted me was a descendent of one of the two brothers who had remained in Romania! She, my third-cousin, lives in Israel, and seems as excited as I am about the connection. We've traded photos and a few stories, and I expect we will do more in the future.
I don't know much more, but I am excited to have reconnected with this part of the family. I've always been as interested in the "tree" aspect of genealogy as much as the "roots" aspect--this is the best kind of genealogical success.
What a fantastic story! I'm so glad your research is paying off. I have a distant cousin in Israel who has just "completed" our family tree project. It's truly fascinating.
ReplyDeleteWow!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteI was pretty floored. I was away on travel and received the e-mail, so I couldn't confirm the connection for a couple of days. The coolest part of it is that there was a book (called a Yiskor book) that was created by the former residents of the town to comemorate those who died during the horrors of WWII. The Ohio State University library had a copy of the book, which is writen in Hebrew and Romanian. There were entries for my great-grandfather's brother which I had translated somewhere around 1999.
ReplyDeleteThe photo that the cousin sent was a scan of that book.