Monday, July 25, 2005

Ancestry II

I realize the previous post was another derailment, but not a major one. I wanted to check the validity of some of Bill Margulies information, not because I think he was making it up, but just because it is evident that he was mistaken on some points. I have no doubt that he was Jackie Mason's manager and the second best diamond polisher in the world. He mentioned living in a certain building on East 9th Street and I wanted to check to see if my mother was living in a building nearby. I was unable to previously, but it is possible that the name was misspelled. I have a subscription to ancestry.com (it's about $75 a year) . It allows you to search federal census records as well as the social secutiry death index. With upgrades there are other databases you can access. I find it invaluable in acquiring primary documents. One of its limitations is that the search can only be done by name and not address, but if you should happen to stumble upon someone with an address that you were interested in you could get a snapshot in time of that block. Anyway I digress, I was reading Eli Wallach's autobiography and it mentioned that he lived at 166 Union Street in Brooklyn. I looked for him in the 1930 census and found him at 2301 Bedord Avenue (sure enough his father owned a candy store). The book mentions that a mob murder had taken place in front of the candy store that Eli's father owned at that address and it was "suggested" that the family move. Eli's brother, Sam, was a prominent teacher's union activist in the 30's. Back to Bill, I can't find any William Margulies that matches him or the sister he mentions, again it is possible that the name was spelled differently and not everyone was recorded in the census. Here's a portion of Eli's autobiography and some info on his brother Sam.

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