About
Me
Hiring a
Genealogist
Case
Studies
Articles
Blog
Kehilalink-
Radom
Kehilalink-
Dunilovichi
Artwork

familyfinds@studio409art.com




CASE STUDIES



Locating Minnesota Records


Finding Prior Generations


















Locating Minnesota Records

 What We Knew:

Client’s great-grandfather came to the Twin Cities in the 1880s.  My client was an active genealogist and had already found considerable information and developed an extensive family tree.

What We Wanted:

The client was located in another state and did not have easy access to all of the resources within Minnesota.  The main value I could add was to identify and access information in Minnesota to which she did not have direct access and continue to pursue the remaining puzzles in her search.

One of the puzzles she hoped to solve was to learn where her great-grandfather came from in Europe. Because he came over fairly early the typical source of immigration records wouldn’t provide that information.
What We Found:
Initially I focused my efforts on information specific to Minnesota although I expanded it to census and immigration records later in our search as I found new branches to the family.  Information I found or reviewed included:

  • Death certificates
  • Obituaries
  • Probate records (wills)
  • Naturalization records
  • Cemetery tombstone photos
  • City directories
  • Draft records
  • Census records
  • Immigration records
  • School records
  • Synagogue records

The findings were too extensive to list, but the most valuable discovery was her great-grandfather's will.  It revealed the European town he came from, a new family branch from a sister of whom we were unaware and many of the causes that he supported.  In the process of my search, I also had a serendipitous discovery.  At the Jewish Historical Society  I stumbled across a scrapbook for the local high school and inserted into its pages was a program from 1911 of a theater performance for the Jewish Home for the Aged.  Performing in that program were her grandmother and two of her grandmother's siblings.  Sometimes we're just lucky!

Case Studies


 



 Finding Prior Generations
What We Knew:
We started out with the birth year of my client’s grandmother, an estimated immigration date and a few of the names of her grandmother’s siblings.  There was no family left who would be able to provide additional information.
What We Wanted: My client wanted to learn where her grandmother came from.  She also wanted to identify family members associated with her grandmother and work back several generations.  The client’s family records were primarily in New York and Eastern Europe. 
What We Found:
I located immigration, census, naturalization and death records. I also reviewed both European census lists and Holocaust records for family names from the identified town. From these records we learned the following:
  •    Names of great-grandparents and great-great grandparents
  •    Name and location of ancestral town
  •    Siblings to her grandmother
  •    European names and their immigration and birthdates
  •   Siblings to her great-grandfather in the US and Europe
  •   Cousins of her grandmother and their spouses and children
  •   27 family members in total

Interestingly we discovered that her widowed great-grandfather brought over the older children in 1904 to stay with his brother, his sister and her husband.  Ten years later he returned to stay bringing over the younger children. Our next step is to use this information to locate family in Argentina.

Case Studies