Living People
Back L-R, Alex, Sol, Manning, Sarah, Morris, Teddy. Front L-R Leslie (daughter of Alex and Dora), Dora, Hyman, Arnie (son of Rose and Teddy), Ryfka, Rose, Helen (daughter of Rose and Teddy)
Since I started working on my family record, I have been primarily interested in dead people. What can I say? I am introvert. I kid…its a joke. What I mean is that my primary interest in genealogy has not been to connect myself with unknown distant cousins and long lost family. I have done DNA testing to help dig backwards, not forwards. I scour the records to recreate a history…a family story. Yet without realizing it…connecting with the living just happens naturally when you dig into the past.
There are some people in every generation, in every family, who take interest in the family record. Those people often naturally find each other, even across long distances. For years the South Africa Locketz and the Minnesota Locketz have been trying to figure out who our common ancestor is. We still haven’t figured it out, but we have established a DNA connection.
Closer to home, I have enjoyed collaborating and talking family tree with so many relatives. I am lucky to have 1st, 2nd and 3rd cousins in Minneapolis from every branch of my tree. And I am always happy to grab a coffee or a zoom with anyone who wants to share information. Consider that an invitation.
While I’ve been on sabbatical, I have had special opportunities to meet cousins I had not met before.
(L-R) David Locketz & Rick Bolnick, 3rd cousins, Once removed.
On a Sunday morning in January, Rick Bolnick and I met up in a hotel lobby in Deerfield, IL and Rick gave me quite a Bolnick family lesson complete with photos and charts. If you descend from Bolnicks, you know that Rick has saved the Bolnick family tree from what otherwise, like most family trees, might have been lost to historical obscurity. He has made sure that family stories and data carry on. It was a pleasure to meet him in person and I have had a great time collaborating with him on what I have been doing and learning. He, and the other Rick…Rick Horwitz (my 2nd cousin, once removed) have been great resources. We have had lively email discussions about who is who in photos, how to deal with discrepancies in the records, deciding how to spell a name in English and lots more.
(L-R) David Locketz, Dina Lokets, Lusya Ulasevich - DNA relatives indicating a common relative 5 or 6 generations back
A couple of years ago, a few of us Locketz family from Minnesota who had done DNA on Ancestry and/or 23&me were contacted by Dina Lokets who lives in Chicago. She and her sister Lusya are very interested in family history and we connected over what we each know about our own Locketz branches. Dina and Lusya were both born in Riga, Latvia, but like the Minnesota Locketz, their family came from D’vinsk/Daugavpils in Lativa. Similar to the South African Locketz family, we know we are connected by DNA and geography, we just don’t know who the common ancestor. On a trip to Chicago, Dina and Lusya hosted me for a terrific lunch and we shared stories and photos trying to figure out who looks like who. We could have talked all day. Very likely, both with South Africa and Dina and Lusya, we have a common ancestor in the late 1700’s or early 1800’s in Kupiskis, Lithuania to where all Minnesota Locketz trace our ancestry (MN Locketz share Yankel Shepsil and Chai Mashi as our common ancestors.)
As Dina has expressed to me, it would be great if our ancestors had left us more information, but it is nice to know that so many survived WWII and multiplied in different parts of the world.
Yours truly standing in front of 1138 N. Kedzie Ave in Chicago where Hyman and Rebecca Bolnick lived (and others at times including Granny Sarah (nee Bolnick) Lessman and Grandma Annette (nee Lessman) Locketz.
Knowing I wanted to explore Chicago and to see the addresses I have found in census records and other documents, and the neighborhoods in which Hyman & Rebecca Bolnick, Manning & Sarah (nee Bolnick) Lessman, and Louis & Elizabeth (nee Rocklin) Locketz, I enlisted my Uncle Michael Damsky who shares my passion for history, family stories and a great city adventure. I’ll share what we saw in another post.
Visting my family’s heritage sites in Fergus Fall, Des Moines, Chicago and here in Minneapolis was in many ways practice for doing the same thing in Europe. Originally, Debbie and I had planned to spend about three weeks in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Latvia exploring the ancestral villages for the Locketz, Ostertag, Schwartzschild, Jacobs, Sparberg, Rubenstein, Lessman and Bolnick families. After this deep dive over the last six months, that list of names is much longer…Rosenthal, Fleischer, Einstein, Loewenberg.
This week as we prepare to celebrate our Exodus from Egypt…I am focussed on the the part of the Hagaddah where we recall that, “my father was a wandering Aramean” (Deuteronomy 26:5) and how many ways it can be interpreted. For me this year I focus on the wandering and the experiences my ancestors had through the centuries. Debbie and I will spend a week in Germany going from village to village and already know we’ll be seeing history and geography that our ancestors experienced for over 300 years during that part of our family story. Perhaps the freedom from oppression to embark on such a journey, no matter how tough the current state of the world, is exactly what Passover calls on us to celebrate.
The German branches of my family, ironically, are the ones I have been able to trace the furthest back…I have confirmation that I’ll find my Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather, Jacob Aron Fleischer’s headstone. He died in 1782. And it is still legible. Pretty incredible. His farther, Aaron Fleischer, my Great X6 Grandfather who born around 1690 is the earliest ancestor I have found.
Because of the state of the world, we are not able to do a big part of the trip and will go to Germany and then Amsterdam and return home. Perhaps Next Year in Latvia…in the meantime…we pray for the safety and security of all of those in harm’s way and hope that justice and peace in Eastern Europe come soon. And that everyone remains healthy.
