52 Ancestors Week 1 - Start
Jan. 9th, 2018 04:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fauxkloreI’m not sure where I stumbled on it, but 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks seemed like a way to get me to do some better documentation of my genealogy research. I’m starting slightly late, but so it goes.
The theme for Week 1 (January 1-7) is Start. While my brother had done some research back in the late 1970s (when Roots was on television) and I was interested, what really got me started was a visit from one of my Israeli cousins when I lived in Los Angeles around 1990. She had a photo of some relatives in Atlanta, who I had heard of but knew nothing about. The photo had first names only. I was on the Jewish genealogy email list and decided to ask whether there might be some synagogue records available from Atlanta in the 1940’s. Someone responded that she worked in a retirement community and she would check to see if anyone there recognized the names (which included a couple of fairly uncommon ones). Less than a week later, she emailed me with information and addresses for two sisters, who I wrote to. This eventually led me to making contact with my HANKIN family (originally KHONKEL / KHAYKEL / HAYKEL). It also convinced me of the power of the internet.
The theme for Week 1 (January 1-7) is Start. While my brother had done some research back in the late 1970s (when Roots was on television) and I was interested, what really got me started was a visit from one of my Israeli cousins when I lived in Los Angeles around 1990. She had a photo of some relatives in Atlanta, who I had heard of but knew nothing about. The photo had first names only. I was on the Jewish genealogy email list and decided to ask whether there might be some synagogue records available from Atlanta in the 1940’s. Someone responded that she worked in a retirement community and she would check to see if anyone there recognized the names (which included a couple of fairly uncommon ones). Less than a week later, she emailed me with information and addresses for two sisters, who I wrote to. This eventually led me to making contact with my HANKIN family (originally KHONKEL / KHAYKEL / HAYKEL). It also convinced me of the power of the internet.
