Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Morris Zimmerman

Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings blog sponsors Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. Tonight I decided to take the challenge and it led me to a person I'd not really researched before.

Randy set the rules of engagement:

1) We're going to do a bit of Semi-Random Research tonight...
2) Go to you family tree database of choice and determine who the very last person on your list of names is.
3) What do you know about this person based on your research? It's OK to do more if you need to - in fact, it's encouraged!
4) How are you related to this person, and why is s/he in your family tree?
5) Tell us about it in a blog post of your own, in a comment to this blogpost, or in a Facebook post or Google+ Stream post.

Results

2. My database of choice is Reunion software, a Mac program. I looked on my people index and noted that the very last person was a living individual. So, I adjusted the rules a bit (hey, who's gonna know?!!?) and moved back to the next one I could find who was dearly departed: Morris Zimmerman (number 632 in my database of more than 1100).

3. I actually knew little about Morris when I started. I was able to use Ancestry to locate the family in the 1920, 1910 and 1900 US federal Census population schedules and the New York State Census for 1925 an 1915. I could not find the family in the 1905 NY State Census on FamilySearch.

Morris was born about 1863 in the Russian Empire. He married Anna Fine and had three children in the old country: Solomon, Joseph and Jennie (?). They emigrated (likely) in 1888, settled in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and had four more children: Henry, Sigmund (or Sidney), Abraham and Isaac. It does not appear that Jennie or Isaac lived to adulthood. Anna appears to have passed away between 1920 and 1925.

4. Morris is on my family tree because he was the father of Abraham Zimmerman who married my great aunt Jeanette Morris Zimmerman (my paternal grandmother's sister).  I first learned about him on Abraham and Jean's marriage certificate from 1927.

5. Here 'tis! See items 2-4.

Morris likely naturalized in 1899, but there is not enough information on the record for me to be sure the record I located on Fold3.com is correct. I can easily fill in some of the blanks online at another time with checks for WWI and WWII military draft registrations for Morris and Annie's sons. Further research could include checking the indices on ItalianGen for New York City births, deaths and marriages - although my initial look-sees did not come up with any easy answers due to the fact that Zimmerman is a fairly common name (i.e., I'd have to order the records and see if they are really for the correct people). 

Thanks, Randy. This was definitely Genea-Musing. Think I'll share this information with  Morris' great granddaughters.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: How popular was the name Emily through the decades?

Well, I've been away from blogging for a few weeks. Frankly, I retreat when my hobby starts becoming stressful. And working full-time, exercising, taking a Russian class, blogging, indexing the 1940 U.S. Census and trying (and flailing!) to get some of my own genealogy/family history work done was getting to be too much. So, I pulled away from blogging for a few weeks.  Now I'm refreshed and ready to start anew.

I thought I'd start with a fun (and easy post). Randy Seaver, a prolific blogger, sponsors "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" each weekend: an opportunity and a challenge to post a blog on a topic he proposes.  Tonight's Genea-Musings prompt: "Tell us about how the popularity of your name has changed over the decades.  Were you named during the buildup, the height, or the drawdown of the popularity of your given name?"

Well, I've long considered the fact that the name "Emily" has become incredibly popular in the last twenty years as a sign that I have been an excellent caretaker and ambassador for the name.  In fact, I knew few Emilys when I was growing up (there were a couple of Emmys, but I scoffed at them for desecrating the name). Now, however, I've started to get over turning around every time I'm in a public place and a mother calls to her child, "Emily!" There are just so many!

So, following Randy's  suggestion I have checked the popular baby names website, entered the subject name and here are the results:

1880s: Rank 91; Percent with name 0.24%; number 3,368

1890s: Rank 94; Percent with name 0.23%; number 5,476

1900s: Rank 101; Percent with name 0.21%; number 6,421

1910s: Rank 102; Percent with name 0.20%; number 17,062

1920s: Rank 137; Percent with name 0.15%; number 18,743

1930s: Rank 170; Percent with name 0.11%; number 11,919

1940s: Rank 178; Percent with name 0.09% number 13,399

1950s: Rank 225; Percent with name 0.07%; number 12,836

1960s: Rank 251; Percent with name 0.07%; number 12,333

1970s: Rank 66; Percent with name 0.28%; number 46,824

1980s: Rank 25; Percent with name 0.71%; number 131,000

1990s: Rank 3; Percent with name 1.21%; number 237,000

2000s: Rank 1; Percent with name 1.14%; number 207,000 

Obviously, my parents were ahead of their times.  I was born in 1954, almost the nadir of the Emily phenomenon. But since I came into adulthood, my name has flourished among newborns.  So, I definitely take credit for this statistical tour de force.

Ashkenazi Jewish tradition is that children are named for deceased relatives of the same gender. Typically the parents use the Hebrew name of the deceased and come up with a local (in this case English) language equivalent using the same starting sound. My parents wanted to name me for my great grandfather Isidore (Yitzchak Leib) Morris.  The Yiddish equivalent of Yitchak is Itzik.  They took the starting sound and decided Emily was the name for me. I have a female cousin who was named Ilene for the same reason.

My parents apparently found out later from some rabbi that when male Hebrew names are converted into female equivalents, they may change quite a bit.  Whomever they consulted said that the female Hebrew name for Yitzchak Leib should be Gilah Gabora. Go figure. My mother used to laugh and tell me that I should have been named Gail.

While Abigail ranked 6 in the 2000s, at 0.75% and 136,000, the 1950s was the height for Gail:

Rank 44; Percent with name 0.43%; number 85,595

Imagine how popular that name would now be if I had gotten hold of it! 

The URL for this post is: http://extrayad.blogspot.com/2012/06/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-how.html

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - FamilySearch Indexing

Randy Seaver, prolific blogger of Genea-Musings, suggests amusing activities for "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun" every weekend.  Today he suggested signing up and preparing for indexing the 1940 Census (set to be available after 72 years on 2 April 2012). I've never participated in his Saturday activities before but, I'd been thinking it was time to prepare for learning how to index on FamilySearch.  There's no time like the present!

FamilySearch Indexing: Piece of Cake!

I signed on, downloaded the software to my Mac, watched the video and set to it. After indexing three records from the "US, Arkansas - Second Registration Draft Cards" record set, I tackled the test for 40 records from the "US - 1940 Federal Census." Piece of cake [hmmm time to take a few minutes off to bake some brownies]!

[After the brownies were in the oven] I completed 10 more records from the "US, Texas - Deaths, 1890-1976." Then, finished off with a new challenge to me (since I never have to look at UK census records in my own research) and selected "UK, England and Wales - 1871 Census," 25 records [brownies are done]

I've done a bunch of indexing for the Italian Genealogy Group, which specializes in New York City records. For that, my indexing skills only required basic facility with Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (as well as eye-crossing copies of photocopied records). I found the FamilySearch indexing program easy to use and master. The Quality Checker (which kicks in after one has finished one's batch) and pull down menus are slick features and definitely helped when I was working on UK records and wasn't entirely familiar with some of the town names.

In all (including the US Census test) I completed 78 names and garnered 98 points (whatever) [and one brownie and a glass of milk.]

Thank you, Randy, for getting me moving on indexing [bon appetit!].

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My next challenge is to get ready for the 2 April unveiling of the unindexed 1940 Federal Census. Estimates are that it will take about six months before we volunteers have finished indexing the Census records.  During that time and during the hours I reserve for my own research, I plan to locate as many relatives as possible in the Census. To do that without an index will require making a good calculation, based on my prior research, of where each family was residing in about 1940 and applying the tools developed and posted on SteveMorse.org to determine the 1940 Federal Census Enumeration Districts (ED). I'll be posting about the 1940 address/ED database I am building for my relatives.

The URL for this post is: http://extrayad.blogspot.com/2012/02/saturday-night-genealogy-fun.html