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52 Ancestors Week 49 - Winter
Dec. 6th, 2018 04:22 pmThe theme for Week 49 (December 3-9) is Winter. The primary suggestion for this was to write about someone whose name reminds you of winter. There wasn’t anyone obvious there. So, let’s use a really contrived connection. Winter means snow. S-N-O-W is a 4-letter word. And K-A-T-Z is a 4-letter name. So let us tackle the KATZ family.
Golde KATZ, nee GOLDWASSER, was my maternal grandfather’s aunt, the sister of his mother. I had a recent breakthrough by discovering that her husband, who I knew of as Hyman, came to the U.S. with the name Chene. (I had assumed he was Chaim, since that is the most common name for men who became Hyman in the U.S.) He arrived in New York on the Neckar from Bremen in December 1913. I haven’t quite tracked down when Goldie and one or more of their children arrived, but it has to be before 1925 because she was listed on Hyman’s naturalization certificate.
They had several children. The oldest, Rose, was born in 1910 and, according to a conversation I had with another relative, ended up living "somewhere in the Midwest." The next was Samuel, born in 1910 and known (at least by my mother) as "Sam Katz, the dwarf Communist printer." Interestingly, he has to have come to the U.S. after his mother and sister, since he was still listed as living in Zambrowa, Poland on Hyman’s naturalization certificate. On the 1930 census, there’s a gap of 12 years before the next son (Jacob or Jack, who was born in 1926 in New York) so that suggests Golde likely came closer to 1925. There were 4 more sons to come, with the youngest born in 1937.
I once complained to my uncle Herb about the difficulty of researching a common name like Katz. He said, "Yes, there’s just too many of them – Siamese, calico, tabby, and so on." If only, say, Rose had been called Calico instead!
Golde KATZ, nee GOLDWASSER, was my maternal grandfather’s aunt, the sister of his mother. I had a recent breakthrough by discovering that her husband, who I knew of as Hyman, came to the U.S. with the name Chene. (I had assumed he was Chaim, since that is the most common name for men who became Hyman in the U.S.) He arrived in New York on the Neckar from Bremen in December 1913. I haven’t quite tracked down when Goldie and one or more of their children arrived, but it has to be before 1925 because she was listed on Hyman’s naturalization certificate.
They had several children. The oldest, Rose, was born in 1910 and, according to a conversation I had with another relative, ended up living "somewhere in the Midwest." The next was Samuel, born in 1910 and known (at least by my mother) as "Sam Katz, the dwarf Communist printer." Interestingly, he has to have come to the U.S. after his mother and sister, since he was still listed as living in Zambrowa, Poland on Hyman’s naturalization certificate. On the 1930 census, there’s a gap of 12 years before the next son (Jacob or Jack, who was born in 1926 in New York) so that suggests Golde likely came closer to 1925. There were 4 more sons to come, with the youngest born in 1937.
I once complained to my uncle Herb about the difficulty of researching a common name like Katz. He said, "Yes, there’s just too many of them – Siamese, calico, tabby, and so on." If only, say, Rose had been called Calico instead!
