Friday, September 18, 2015

A Second Look...Epiphany!

During this summer I was making efforts in discovering who my ancestors are on my mother's side of the family, and was privileged to go back at least two generations. I have been successful thus far in identifying my grandmother's predecessors.
My grandmother's grandfather, Harry Glasser, was listed as a son to Samuel and Sarah Glasser, who were living in New Jersey at the time the U.S. Census had been taken in 1910.
It can be understood that while discovering the names of our ancestors, that the mothers are usually the more difficult to identify when we are seeking to find out their maiden names. However, earlier this week, as I have been preparing this current post, I had discovered Sarah Glasser's maiden name, happens to be Miller.
This occurred while I was making Google searches on possible names that are related to my research, when the 1910 U.S. Census record showed up under Mocavo.com. The digital image was available to look at, to which I took the liberty to do so, despite the fact that it has been previously downloaded onto my laptop. I decided to make a "cross-examination" of what I had in my personal collections, with the census which I had found on Mocavo.
Mocavo, like Ancestry, has the ability to highlight a household you desire to look at. And as I had selected the household which I desired to see, I discovered a man by the name of Jacob Miller who was a brother-in-law to Samuel Glasser. Once I looked upon that, a light bulb turned on and I came to realize in that moment: I had just found Sarah Glasser's maiden name.


(I could only upload this image from my computer, so I apologize for making this image rather small. I did included a hyperlink in which this image may be viewed, however.)

The funny thing about Sarah Miller is that she and her brother, Jacob, are both from Russia. And yet, they have English names for some unbeknownst reason. I have found, however, that the name Miller may or may be Jewish, since both Jewish and non-Jewish people tend to have interchanging names.
I would like to mention however, that both Sarah and Jacob Miller were naturalized citizens, which means they did immigrate to the United States, which leads to believe that they changed their name some time after they sailed across the Atlantic Ocean.
In addition to the significance with this census record as far as Jewish heritage is concerned are the origins of all the adults which were recorded: "Russ Yiddish". Yiddish is what the Ashkenazim sect of Judaism speaks.

No comments:

Post a Comment