Colder weather means more inside fun. My Grand Book is a craft project which creates a book about a child's immediate ancestors, up to great-grandparents. Paste in a photo. Fill in a few basics (name, birthday, hometown, likes and dislikes). After you create the book, you can tell stories about your ancestors. Your together time this holiday season can answer the question, "Who are my ancestors?"

My Grand Book is a supervised activity for children ages 4-10. It creates a book the child can take home.

My husband’s maternal great-great aunt, Feige Cohen, spent the Fourth of July of 1905 in New York harbor, waiting to clear immigration. She was onboard the S.S. Statendam (built for Holland America by Harlan & Wolff Limited, Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1898). The Statendam sailed from Rotterdam, Netherlands, on June 24, 1905, and arrived in New York on July 2, 1905.

Were there fireworks in the harbor? Did Feige see them? Not sure. But thanks to Ancestry.com,  we know she was released by immigration on July 5, 1905, at 1:10 pm, to be met by her brother, Harry, who paid her fare. Feige, who gave her last place of residence as “Ostrow,” could read and write. She was 17 years old and had $15 in her pocket.

One-hundred years later, Feige’s great-niece Maxine (Shanbar) Marshall, my husband’s mother, cruised on the successor Statendam (same name, different ship), now a luxury cruise ship for tourist travel.

Have you taken a special journey on the Fourth of July? Do you have a travel story that happened on the Fourth? Let me know.

And have a great Fourth of July!

They were talking about how difficult it is to trace family genealogy, especially if you are Jewish. They made it sound hard to get information, so hard  there’s no point trying. I want to show them otherwise.  

“I don’t know anything about my family,” Artie started. “My father never talked about his parents.”  Artie’s father was born in Russia.

“Let me show you,” I said, opening up the laptop as we sat around the kitchen table. I logged into my account at Ancestry.com.

“What is your father’s name?” I asked.

“Saul Fleishman.”

I went to the “search” bar at the top of the screen on Ancestry.com and clicked “search all records.” The search form appeared. I typed in the name.

“When was he born?” I asked.

Artie knew the date within a year.  I entered his father’s birth year and then “1” in the +/- dropdown menu to indicate that we were sure of the date plus or minus a year.

“Do you know when he died?”

Artie gave me the year of his father’s death. He knew this exactly. I entered the year into the search box and clicked “exact.” We added Artie and his siblings in the search box under “children.”

“Where did your dad live?”

Artie wasn’t sure of all the locations his father had lived in around the Boston area. We put the one location we were 100% sure of— Massachusetts. Then I pressed “search.”

 “You’re not going to believe this,” I said.

We watched as the screen immediately filled with document after document about Artie’s father. I saw Artie’s  mouth open wide. For the next hour, we scrolled through the search results—city directories, business listings, birth certificate,  census listings showing Saul as a young man, and naturalization papers, to name a few.  

“Look, here’s your dad.” I showed Artie the 1930 Census document. It showed that his grandfather owned the house his father grew up in. It was worth $14,000.

“There it is—the egg business,” Artie pointed to the occupation and industry column in the 1930 Census. His grandfather was in the egg business, as was his father, and then Artie himself. Artie recognized addresses, names of colleagues, names of nearby businesses, his father’s lawyer. He began to recall things his father had said about these people. There were names of business associates which Artie had heard his father mention. He hadn’t thought about these names in years. We were so engrossed that we ignored everyone else  for more than an hour.

 “I’ve never seen my father’s name so much in all my life,” said Artie. I promised to email him his father’s naturalization papers and other documents. Ancestry.com is addictive.  But there are worse addictions.

Although there is more than one DNA lab, Dr. Bettinger (www.thegeneticgenealogist.com) recommends www.familytreeDNA.com because it has the largest database–one-half million people have been tested using it. (The larger the database, the easier to find a match to your DNA ancestry.) Women test only the “female DNA,” or mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA), which is passed down from their mothers. Men can test both the mtDNA from their mothers, and the “surname DNA,” or male DYA (YDNA) from their fathers.

Who knew that 90% of Europeans are descended from seven women, known as the seven daughters of Eve? Check out The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan Sykes (W. W. Norton, 2001 hardcover, 2002 trade paperback). According to Nielsen Bookscan, the book has sold 100,000 copies in hardcover and paperback combined.

Have you had your DNA analyzed? Do you know where your ancient ancestors came from?  Who said we can’t time travel?