Norwitz Notions

Now this is a bit of advanced genealogical sleuthing. How do you find people in a document that don’t seem to be there? Teasing Out Census Entries For those of you who have searched for families in the Census records on Ancestry or FamilySearch or elsewhere, you know that often the person you’re looking for […]

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How do you know if a person is the one you think they are? Too many people who do genealogy just assume that the same name means the same person. That’s how you end up with family trees where a parent was born 50 years later than their supposed child. Sometimes you’re careful and avoid […]

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I’ve seen some oddnesses in my time exploring cemeteries, but this one is new to me. This is the cemetery walking distance from my house and its hilly paths and century and a half of burials make it an enjoyable walk when parks are closed or crowded. Cypress Hill Memorial Park Cemetery, Petaluma, California. We […]

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  Jewish Cemetery in Žilina, Slovakia Sorted by Surname I visited the very well-kept Žilina cemetery in May 2017.  At the entrance are two framed maps of the cemetery, painstakingly hand drawn to scale, each grave listed with the name found on the headstone.  This document is my transcription of these maps. The cemetery is […]

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Jewish Cemetery in Žilina, Slovakia Sorted by Location of Grave I visited the very well-kept Žilina cemetery in May 2017.  At the entrance are two framed maps of the cemetery, painstakingly hand drawn to scale, each grave listed with the name found on the headstone.  This document is my transcription of these maps. The cemetery […]

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Bytča Archives Jewish Records Sorted by Microfilm Number On a recent trip to Slovakia, my cousins and I visited the Slovakian state archives in Bytča, one of 7 regional archives in the country.  Their paper documents are generally for researching the nobility and other things not relevant to Jewish history.  The main records are on microfilm.  They have […]

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Bytča Archives Jewish Records Sorted by Place Name On a recent trip to Slovakia, my cousins and I visited the Slovakian state archives in Bytča, one of 7 regional archives in the country.  Their paper documents are generally for researching the nobility and other things not relevant to Jewish history.  The main records are on microfilm.  They […]

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This is the drosh, the Torah commentary, I wrote for my Bat Mitzvah on June 14, 2014.  My Torah portion was Sh’lakh L’kha, specifically Numbers 15:14-16. I gave a shorter, and less technical version, at the actual service.  The only changes were to the genetics portion in the beginning (I also did not read anything in boxes). […]

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I’ve been heavily into genealogy for the last year, fleshing out both my and my husband’s family trees.  Recently, I decided to delve into DNA.  I chose 23andme and have been thrilled with the results (this link gives me a small referral fee, thanks if you use it). One of the things they tested me […]

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