52 Ancestors: Military

Sigmund Levy, c. 1918

My paternal grandfather, Sigmund Levy, served in WWI – I’ve written a lot about his time as a Flying Cadet (he had to sit on a pillow when flying!).  But it all became a little more real when I discovered some new information.

It looks like just an old binder but when I opened it up, I found this on the inside cover.



This is my grandfather’s “stuff” from his Flying Cadet Days!  It looks to be class notes, sketches, schedules – so much information that I could never capture it all.

And look – this shows the instructions for newly arrived cadets and that he was assigned to Squadron A 61. 



Binder tabs didn’t look all that much different in 1918.  Unfortunately, he didn’t seem to use them and just put everything loose inside the binder.



Lots of notes.  My grandfather didn’t have great handwriting but this is all really tough to read.  I’m sure he figured he’d be the only one to read it plus it’s all Greek to me.



He had a schedule of his daily activities.  This card was compliments of Aviator’s Exchange.  It’s interesting to see their advertisements along the side of the card – the Aviators could check their excess baggage free of charge.  I also notice they had Aviation Stationery – I wonder if that’s where Sig bought the stationery he used to write letters to my grandmother (which are safely tucked away in my closet).



On Mondays and Tuesdays at 8:10 a.m., Sig attended Machine Guns (class, I guess).  Here’s a sample of his notes.



Wanna know more about the Theory of Flight and History of Flying?  Good luck with that (I can barely read a word).



And they learned about the Articles of War – I love that he reminded himself that Article II was important. 



Inside were a couple of folders – this one was about Airplanes.

The first page was an airplane sketch.  An airplane sketch today would sure look different.




Of course they learned about Morse Code.  Is that even used these days?




They were really getting prepared.





Thankfully, Sig never left the United States and went on to lead a long and productive life.  I don’t remember him ever talking about his time as a Flying Cadet and for that matter, I don’t remember my dad mentioning it, either.  Did Sig not talk about it or was I not listening?

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As we honor the fallen this Memorial Day, I take this opportunity to remember my two ancestors who were killed in the line of duty.

My 2nd great grandfather, William J. Brooks, killed at the Battle of Fredericksburg, December 13, 1862.  Buried in Dials Cemetery, Laurens County, South Carolina.



And my mother’s step brother, Robert Melvin Hunter, killed aboard the USS Oklahoma, Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1941.  Buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (aka The Punchbowl) in Honolulu, Hawaii.



Rest in peace.

52 Ancestors: Another Language – Joseph Steen

This week’s prompt for the challenge is Another Language.  Not sure where to start or what to write, my brain churned for an inspiration.  While I assumed that many of my ancestors spoke another language since they came from Poland, Germany, and other countries in Europe, I don’t know that any of them spoke or understood another language.

But wait – being 50% Ashkenazi Jew meant there was sure to be some Hebrew or Yiddish, right?  And then I remembered that my 3x great grandfather, Joseph Steen, was buried with a beautiful Hebrew inscription on his headstone.



And, fortunately, I have a transcription.

Moshe Yosef 

HERE LIES
A noble and a faithful devoted man to God
Died on the eve of Shabat on 15 Av and was buried on 17 Av.
A man of integrity and honesty,
Hard worker and with clean hands and heart.
Never gossip nor lying.
From this world you departed but peace with God you found.

While I don’t know specifically that Joseph or his family spoke Hebrew, it was obviously important enough for them to inscribe his headstone with the words in Hebrew.

Joseph was born in Poland in about 1826 or 1827 and emigrated from Posen to England in about 1850.  With him when he emigrated were his wife, Hannah Plotzky, and his daughter, Rebecca (my 2x great grandmother).  Another child was born before they found their way to New York where son Samuel was born in 1855.  Shortly thereafter, the family moved to Santa Cruz where Joseph opened a bath house and five more children were born.

I don’t know much about Joseph’s short life.  He was enumerated in 1860 in Santa Cruz where he lived next door to Louis Schwartz, Rebecca’s future husband and my 2x great grandfather.  And next door to Louis and his business partner, Solomon Fisher, was the Barnet family.  I have a lot of research to do on this family but I do know that daughter Grace graduated from Santa Cruz High School with my great grandmother, Bertha Schwartz, and served as a bridesmaid in Bertha’s wedding to Abraham Gunzendorfer.  As I’ve started to research them, I found someone with a family tree on Ancestry that also shows up as a DNA match for me.  So maybe, just maybe, I’ll find that the Barnet family is in some way related to my family.

Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009. Images reproduced by FamilySearch.Original data - 1860 U.S. census, population schedule. NARA microfilm publication M653, 1,438 rolls. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records

In 1863, Joseph was listed on the IRS Tax Assessment List.  I have zero experience with this type of list so it’s all Greek to me.

Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.Original data - National Archives (NARA) microfilm series: M603, M754-M771, M773-M777, M779-M780, M782, M784, M787-M789, M791-M793, M795, M1631, M1775-M1776, T227, T1208-T1209.

Uh-oh, he’s back on the list in October, 1864.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?


Online publication - Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008.Original data - National Archives (NARA) microfilm series: M603, M754-M771, M773-M777, M779-M780, M782, M784, M787-M789, M791-M793, M795, M1631, M1775-M1776, T227, T1208-T1209.


In 1864, Joseph lost a stock certificate of 10 shares of stock.  I sure wish I knew if this was ever found.

Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, 12 Nov 1864, Sat, page 3

And then his life was cut short.

Santa Cruz Weekly Sentinel, 4 Aug 1866, Sat, page 2

Consumption is an old term for wasting away of the body, particularly from pulmonary tuberculosis.  It has been said that tuberculosis was known as a “good death” as the slow progress of the disease allowed the patient to arrange their affairs.  I can’t imagine a 39 year old man with a young family facing the task of arranging his affairs.

To read the story of how I found Joseph’s grave (the same cemetery as my father!), click HERE for my #2 genealogical find of 2012. 

מנוחה בשלום, יוסף
Rest in peace, Joseph.

52 Ancestors: Close Up

This week’s prompt was puzzling to me at first – close up?  What did that mean?  I read some comments from other bloggers and ideas starting swirling in my head.  I could look close up at the quilts my great grandmother and her mother made which are safely tucked away.  Or, I could take a closer look at the small tuxedo that surely belonged to my grandfather.  But as I rummaged around the storage closet, I came across this.



This was too good to pass up – the box of memories from our wedding in 1974.  Had I really kept this stuff - I needed to take a closer look!

Of course, I had to start with the invitation.  Remember, I was just 19 and this was the mid 70’s when daisies seemed to be quite popular.  I remember there was quite a bit of ‘drama’ because I’d failed to mention the groom’s father who, by then, had remarried.



There were some really cute little response cards included with each invitation.  I remember being so excited to get the mail and find a card in the stack the mail carrier delivered.  Of course I had to keep the entire box (why keep just one – 50 would be much better) and even found a few stamps included.



I must have spent quite a bit of time planning for the special event.



And then came the shower.  Or maybe it was more than one?  I kept the decorations which were brilliantly made by Hallmark and even had matching napkins.



I went through a few of the cards – most of them had a small square of wrapping paper included which, I assume, was cut out from the paper the corresponding gift was wrapped in. 



And then came the big day.  All of the gift cards were inside the box. 



There must have been a shortage of card designs because we received 5 of the same card.  What’s especially humorous is that one of these was from my husband’s father and step-mother, one from his paternal grandmother, and one from her sister – they all shopped at the same place!



So many of the attendees are no longer with us – not just the older generations but many of our high school friends. 

There were a few very special notes.  Here’s one from my favorite uncle (shhh, don’t tell anyone he was my only uncle), my dad’s brother, Rob.  I love his reference of a cozy heart.




And, of course, a very special card from my grandmother, Loraine (Gunzendorfer) Levy.  Grandma gave us the generous gift of a trip to Honolulu for our honeymoon – not bad for two young kids!



And inside the card was another note.



I laughed at her grandmotherly advice to put the check into traveler’s checks (are those even used anymore?) so I wouldn’t lose it.  And I laughed again when I found I had done just that.  No surprise that the wallet was empty!



We still laugh at some of the events of the day – the hair dresser who did my sister’s and my hair thinking we were going to the senior ball and the groom ‘forgetting’ to pick up my brother on the way to the event.  But it all worked out.  Unfortunately, these two memories have seen better days and I really am not sure what they even are – maybe the bells were on top of the cake?



And the book of wedding guests is priceless – so many names that probably didn’t mean much to me at the time but now from my research, I see so many familiar names.



I found so many honeymoon memories – why did I save our boarding passes from the plane? 

This was fun to see.



So nice that the hotel provided this waterproof utility bag and if they hadn’t told me it was “yours for the taking”, I might have left it behind.  But it was perfect to wrap the glasses we brought home with us.



What is that it is wrapped in?  Is that decorative toilet paper?  I do remember feeling quite adult since the drinking age was 18 in Hawaii so we were able to order drinks in the restaurant.  I guess it made such an impression that I decided to bring the glasses home.

While I was tempted to just toss everything once I’d gone through it, I remembered how exciting it was to find the wedding invitation for my great grandparents so I boxed up a few things and hope that, one day, my grandkids and their descendants will have a good laugh looking at these things.

Boy were we YOUNG!

52 Ancestors: Cemetery

While I haven’t spent a lot of time in cemeteries, I do love visiting and find it to be such a quiet and reflective place.  Each grave stone tells a story and I like to think about the circumstances that brought each person there.  Was there a lengthy illness?  Were they involved in an accident?  What loved ones did they leave behind?

Of course one very special cemetery is Oak Hill Memorial Park in San Jose, the cemetery my parents are interred in.  I have so many memories as a child/young adult driving by this beautiful place and listening to my dad exclaim “people are just dying to get in there” or “they tell me business is really dead in there”.  Of course he’d laugh and no one in the car would even begin to think that someday the joke wouldn’t be at all funny as we made arrangements to lay him to rest, to be joined 8 years later by Mom.  I also wrote a bit about finding my 3x great grandfather in the same cemetery HERE. 

This post wouldn’t be complete without memorializing Mom & Dad one more time – of course it wouldn’t have been complete without Dad having his favorite Stanford hat with him!





One of my most treasured visits to a cemetery was in 2012 when I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to wander through Hills of Eternity Memorial Park in Colma, California.  Colma has quite an interesting history which you can read about HERE.  In a nutshell, San Francisco cemeteries were “evicted” in 1912 and the little town of Colma became the City of the Silent when the living became drastically outnumbered by the dead.  In fact, in 2006 there were 1.5 million souls interred within the area and the 2010 census found only 1792 living residents.  Thus was born the slogan “It’s Great to be Alive in Colma”.

There are 16 cemeteries in Colma, including a pet cemetery.  And while I’ve only scratched the surface, since my husband and I both have strong ties to the area, between us we have many, many ancestors within this small town.

I remember driving up to Hills of Eternity with great anticipation of what I’d find.  Since I haven’t spent a lot of time searching in cemeteries, I wasn’t really sure where to even start.





We decided to start at the office.  Seems obvious now but it actually took me a minute to figure that out.  The woman was only too happy to help and was I ever surprised when she pulled this out from behind the desk.



Of course my memory is fading now (darn this getting old sucks) but I remember the thrill of seeing the beautifully written entries (why didn’t I take a picture of that?) and as I scanned, seeing many of my “peeps”.  At one point the woman walked away for a minute to look for something and I remember thinking how easy it would have been to grab the books and run!

The most important visit of the day (and one in which I can remember almost every detail) was coming upon this.



There were my peeps! 



In the front on the left is Ferdinand Gunzendorfer, my 2x great grandfather.  And next to him is Fannie Goldstein Gunzendorfer, my 2x great grandmother.

And the small stone to the right of the large Gunzendorfer stone is my grandmother’s brother, Wilton Louis Gunzendorfer.





After wandering around to see many other ancestors, we stopped at the grave of one of the famous residents, Wyatt Earp.  It’s strange to think that my ancestors are sharing a final resting place with a famous person.



And finally we moved on to Portals of Eternity Mausoleum on the grounds of Hills of Eternity where my great grandparents, Abraham and Bertha (Schwartz) Gunzendorfer, are interred.  It fascinates me as to why so many of my Jewish ancestors were cremated and I was especially disappointed to find that Birdie and Abe were interred so high that it was almost difficult to see their final resting place.  I wish I knew the story behind the scratch – it’s not like someone could have vandalized it.






I’ve been fortunate that when I visit a cemetery, there are typically more than one family member interred there.  And several times I’ve unexpectedly found a surprise ancestor or two.  It sure does pay to look around to see who else you can find.

I’m looking forward to many more cemetery visits in the future but the one that I am most anxious to see is McPherson Cemetery in Kansas, the final resting place of my elusive 3x great grandfather, Emery Waller.  I won’t repeat the story of finding Emery in an unmarked grave and then the honor of having his grave marked but you can read about it HERE.  And just because I love seeing the photo, here it is again.



For all those ancestors I haven’t located yet, I’ll be looking for you!

52 Ancestors: Maiden Aunt

I don’t have a biological aunt – my mother was an only child and my father had one brother.  In fact, my paternal grandfather had three brothers and my paternal grandmother only had a brother so I didn’t even have a biological great aunt on my dad’s side.  So that just leaves my maternal grandparents – my maternal grandmother had one sister and one brother but I’m not sure I ever met her sister, although I’ve connected a bit with some of her descendants.  And since my mother was not close with her father and his siblings, while I know about them now I didn’t before I started this journey.  So the only aunts or great aunts I might have had were those who were married to my ancestor so not a maiden, or spinster as I’d always heard these women referred as.

But I always remember the next door neighbors of my grandparents, the Stubblefield sisters.  I have very few memories of them and until I started researching, I didn’t even know their first names.  The only ‘detail’ I had was that one (or maybe both) was my dad’s teacher at one time.  And I remembered that neither of them had ever married.

Ethel Lacy Stubblefield was born 31 October, 1897 in New York; Gertrude Scott Stubblefield was born 2 November, 1903 in Oklahoma.  They were the children of James and Mattie (Lacy) Stubblefield, who were married 11 September 1895 in Cuyahoga, Ohio.  Another child, Frank, was born in February, 1899 but, sadly, only lived until 1 October, 1900.  And the sadness continued when Mattie died in 1909. 

I’ve done some research to try to validate the memories I have of them and found them in Fresno where they seemed to move around a bit.  Ethel was, in fact, a teacher at Fresno High School at the time my dad was there (early 1940’s) so that is probably the sister who was my dad’s teacher.  Although I thought I remembered she was his teacher in grammar school.  But my memories are fading so I could have that wrong.  In her later years she was a Consultant at the Board of Education.

Ethel Stubblefield, 1946 Owl (Fresno High School Yearbook)

Gertrude seemed to spend the majority of her teaching years at Theodore Roosevelt High School and Fresno City/Junior College.  Since my dad never attended of those schools, the connection must have been Ethel.

Fresno City College Yearbook, 1959

I’ve tracked these two sisters from 1340 Linden Avenue to 727 Terrace Avenue to 4640 Wilson and finally to 1561 Echo Avenue, next door to my grandparents.

If I hadn’t pulled up these photos (I even have the 1946 Owl in my collection since my mom graduated from Fresno High School in 1946), I might have zero memory of what they looked like.  I have come across a few photos of my grandmother with some friends and I’ve wondered if they were the sisters. 

What do you think?



That’s Loraine in the middle (with her mink, of course) and my mom directly behind her.  The other ladies standing are my dad’s two cousins (Hermina and Gilda) with Gilda’s husband standing behind them.  And I think Gilda’s two daughters in the front.  Not sure about the other older woman.

And another.



Are these the Stubblefield sisters?  I would so love to get in contact with a descendant but since they had no children and no nieces or nephews, I’m not sure there is anyone out there looking for them. 

Ethel and Gertrude are interred together at Los Gatos Memorial Park, coincidentally not far from the home I grew up in.

You are not forgotten, Ethel and Gertrude Stubblefield.

And now I’m 7!

Photo by Bart Maguire

Here we are - another year has passed.  Which means I’ve been blogging for seven (SEVEN!) years.  It seems like just yesterday that I got the bug and boy has it been a great ride.  Thanks again to Kerry Scott for getting me started (her blog is undergoing a makeover right now but you can find her at Clue Wagon)  And yes, she really does like dead people!

I remember my first post back in 2011 – I wasn’t sure what I was doing and was worried that no one would read it or if they did, care what I had to say.  But I’ve met a lot of people, received some great feedback, and built up my confidence.  And I’ve learned that no matter what I say, it’s MY blog and I can do and say whatever the heck I want.

I think I’ll take my blogiversary as a day to step back and reflect on some of the more popular posts throughout the years.  Not necessarily my favorites but the posts that brought the most views.  I will add that when I write about events in Fresno, I have two Fresno Facebook groups that I share my blogs in so traffic is always higher then.  So here are my top 5.

Wanted: Herman Levy from January 14, 2018.  I haven’t figured any of this out yet and I wasn’t very successful in my search in Salt Lake City but I’m not giving up.  My dad’s cousin’s two children have submitted their DNA to Ancestry.com so maybe between us we’ll figure something out. 

Back in Time from October 14, 2012.  This was definitely one of my favorite posts to write as it shows the letter my grandfather, Sig Levy, wrote to his future in-laws, Birdie and Abe Gunzendorfer, asking for my grandmother’s hand in marriage.  It’s not often you can read both sides of the story.  I’m sure glad they said yes!

On January 5, 2013, I took part in Saturday Night Genealogy Fun and wrote about where my ancestors were 100 Years Ago.  It was fun to put the post together and I was so glad that I had a picture of one of the homes.

Best Wishes for a Long and Happy Life Together, from November 17, 2013 was one of the blog posts I wrote about the wedding of my parents, Gerry (Martin) and Gordon Levy.  A beautiful portrait of my mother in her wedding gown always hung at the end of the hallway in our home so there was no forgetting – ever – what she looked like on that day.  Plus, as kids my sister and I would spend HOURS pouring through the photo album from their wedding and memory book so there will always be lots of memories in my mind.

And a repeat from last year’s top 5 is this post from June 16, 2013 A Bittersweet Day, another Father’s Day without my dad.  It was an emotional post to write as my mom had passed away a few weeks before (May 22) and then we ‘celebrated’ her first birthday (June 8) without her.  So by June 16 I was pretty emotionally spent.  I love looking back at the photos in that post but I wish I knew more about Dad’s friendship with Bob Hope!

Another Facebook group I’m a member of is GeneabloggersTribe.  How nice to be remembered for my blogiversary – you can read it HERE. 

I have so much left to say so I hope you’ll stay with me for the next seven (or seventy) years.

On to eight!