Another little gem

A few months ago I wrote about discovering a photo of my Great Grandmother’s, Birdie Schwartz, high school graduation from Santa Cruz High School in 1890.  You can read about it here.  I love the photo so much that I just have to post it again.

Santa Cruz High School Graduating class – 1890 Bertha Schwartz – standing, far right

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And now I’ve discovered this.

Bertha Schwartz

It looks to me like Birdie’s portrait from that very special day.  I just love all of the flowers and decorations around her – sure not something you’d see today.  I’ll bet there is some significance to it all but I’m not sure I’ll ever know what that might be.

I have so many photos of Birdie over the years.  This is probably the earliest one I’ve found of her.  I think she looks to be about 3.

Birdie Schwartz c. 1875

It looked like this before I cropped it – could it have been a little Christmas ornament or something?




My parents kept this photo on a table in the living room and always said I looked just like her.  I sure would have loved wearing those clothes as a young girl!



And here is Birdie as a young woman.  Look at that beautiful blouse!



And this is Birdie near the end of her life.



What a treasure to be able to see my great grandmother throughout her lifetime.  Once again, I have to thank my grandmother for being such a packrat!

Step by Step

Don’t you just love it when you stumble across something that is not only cool but also chips away at your research?  That’s just what happened to me today!

Since I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about I decided to go into my treasure chest of “stuff” and see what caught my eye.  And this is what I found.



Standing on the right is my great grandmother, Bertha “Birdie” Schwartz.  I’d seen this photo a number of times but because it is fairly large, I’d put it into a larger box with some old newspapers and various other things and didn’t get back to it.

So I drug it out and showed it to my husband who promptly noticed the scrolls that each young person was holding and we wondered if it was some sort of graduation or something.  That could be since there were two older people (teachers?) sitting with the young people.  And that’s when he noticed Birdie’s left wrist and a bracelet she was sporting.  “Is that your bracelet?” he asked.  Oh my, I think he could be right!

One of my earliest blog posts was about Birdie where I showed a picture of the bracelet she was given at her high school graduation.  You can read it here but here is the bracelet again.



Not a great photo and the bracelet is safely housed in the safe deposit box so I couldn’t take another one but compare it to this close up of Birdie’s wrist.



Yep, that’s it!  This must be a photo of Birdie’s high school graduation!

On the back of the photo was this.

Property of Loraine Levy To be given her after my demise

Loraine Levy was Birdie’s oldest child, only daughter and my paternal grandmother.  I’m glad to know the picture ended up with not just Loraine but her granddaughter many, many years later. 

Since Birdie grew up in Santa Cruz, California and the Santa Cruz Sentinel is included in the newspapers.com collection, I decided to peruse the site in the 1890 time period to see if I could find out anything about the graduation.  And look what I found!

Santa Cruz Sentinel Saturday, 7 June, 1890 Page 3

There it is – Bertha graduated from Santa Cruz High School on Friday, 6 June, 1890!  Now if that’s not enough, it gives the list of graduates – 8 girls and 1 boy.  Take a look at the photo – 8 girls and 1 boy!  So this is the 1890 graduating class from Santa Cruz High School! 

But that’s not all - one of the graduates was Bella Steen who just so happens to have been the first cousin of Birdie’s mother, Rebecca Steen Schwartz.  Rebecca’s father, Joseph, was the brother of Bella’s father, Jacob.

I had also noted in the photo that the young lady sitting on the left looked familiar and I knew I’d seen her somewhere before.  Which got me thinking – could the familiar looking girl be Bella Steen?

A quick look at some of my photos and I found this.



Could this unidentified woman be the same as the graduate who looked familiar to me?


I think they might be one and the same!  Maybe my Steen cousin can confirm for me but I think it’s the same person. 

I need to research Bella more thoroughly.  I do know that she married Morris Benas who just happened to be a brother of Goldie Benas.  That name probably doesn’t mean much to too many people but one of Goldie’s sons was Sigmund Levy, my paternal grandfather who married Bertha’s daughter, Loraine.  I would be willing to bet that Bella and Morris were the connection to introducing my grandparents!

Just when you hit a slump a little nugget appears – so now I’m going to follow the headline of the newspaper and take it step by step.