The Ninth Waxman

In researching my Waxman family from Tulchin, Ukraine I have been able to connect almost all of the family, including connecting with the living generations of my Great-Grandmother's siblings. Yet there is one missing piece that is still unknown...the ninth sibling.

Isaac Waxman and Sarah Remer arrived in Philadelphia with most of their children in 1904 and almost all of them were still living in the same house by 1910. Of the children of Isaac and Sarah I knew about eight of them; Zisel Artzis, Katie Shore, Samuel Waxman, Hyman Waxman, Charles Waxman, Pearl Ross, David Waxman, and Fannie Shubert. Yet the 1910 census clearly states that Isaac and Sarah had 11 children with 9 living, so there is a ninth sibling unaccounted for in my research. I have yet to find the immigration documents for Isaac or Sarah, which would hopefully give more information, although the Census records seem to indicate neither naturalized.

There are a few possibilities as to where this unknown sibling was living. They may have stayed back in Tulchin, they may have immigrated later, or they may have even been the first to immigrate. The oldest known sibling, Zisel, immigrated with her husband and children a few years after the rest of the family, so we already know the family hadn't all travelled together.

One clue is the death record for Isaac Waxman, which lists the informant on the record as an M. Waxman. Looking at the tree around the time Isaac died there are no adults in the family who would have been an M. Waxman (including the wives of Isaac's sons), so it is my belief that this M. Waxman may be the 9th sibling. I have since looked at many searches for Waxmans living in Philadelphia with a first name starting with M, both male and female, but have yet to turn up anything fruitful. Over time this mystery may become resolved, especially if we can find more records of the family from Ukraine. 

Digital Genealogy and Privacy Issues

For anyone in genealogy who has invited relatives to view their tree online it is likely they have run across a few relatives who were less than pleased with family information being published online. I once had a cousin actually threaten to sue me if I didn't take the tree down (referring to geni.com). For genealogists who are constantly reaching out to new found relatives this can be even more prevalent, especially if the family being contacted have had identity theft problems.

This summer at the 35th Annual Conference of the International Association for Jewish Genealogical Societies in Jerusalem, Randy Schoenberg presented his lecture "Privacy Issues with Online Family Trees" in which he discusses why there is little to fear when it comes to digital genealogy. He methodically and logically breaks-down the idea of privacy rights and how they apply to genealogy just as they do in every day life. In his introduction Schoenberg states -

"The right to privacy is a relatively recent legal construction, and one that is still evolving. As genealogists, people whose goal is to learn and write about personal details of other people, we often hear complaints about invasion of privacy. So it is worth exploring the issue in some detail to understand what rights exist at present and what might evolve in the future. Since much of our work is done online, I will also address privacy issues related to online trees on various platforms."

Click here for the published version of the lecture