Breathing new life into old photos since 2012.

Tag: Jewish

52 Ancestors, No. 26: Aunt Ceil, and the Life of a Family Photo

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As a young girl, my mother discovered in a closet a plaque that eerily bore her own name, Celia Anflick, along with birth and death dates. It was a metal plaque that my mother described as the sort of thing one might see hung in a mausoleum. Of course, the plaque was not my mother’s memorial from a past life. Rather, it was a memorial to an aunt whom my mother would never meet.  Continue reading

52 Ancestors, No. 18: Minnie Anflick, A Mother Worth Fighting For

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I’m enjoying a nice little vacation this week, but taking a vacation from my vacation to publish this blog on Ancestor No. 18, my maternal grandfather’s mother. She was born Minnie Snyder in what was once the Russian Empire, sometime in the early 1890s. Telling exactly when she was born is difficult. I suspect that several of the young ladies on this branch of the family falsified their ages on official documents, such as marriage records. Suffice to say, the birth dates on the documents vary widely. Immigration documents place her residence at the time of emigration in a place called Mogilev. There are a few places with that name, the most well known of which, I believe, is in Belarus. There is another place, in what is now the Ukraine, called Mogilev-Podolskiy. I suspect Minnie was from the latter because of its proximity to the birthplace of her future husband’s family, and also because of its strong Jewish heritage, but I’m not completely sure in which of the towns she lived.  Continue reading

52 Ancestors, No. 10. Henry Anflick: An Honest, Reasonable, Reliable Paperhanger

Henry Anflick was my mother’s paternal grandfather. Piecing together his early family history has been a conundrum. It may be time to call in the professionals to whisk me away, Who Do You Think You Are? style, to the place of his birth: Odessa, Ukraine. Okay, well, maybe best to wait until things settle down over there. The current unrest notwithstanding, some Ukranian archives are probably the most likely place to find clues as to this man’s origins.  Continue reading