Genealogy Field Trip

Planning a trip to Washington Cemetery, Brooklyn, to look for great-grandfather's grave.  Keeping links and info here for easy reference.

Apparently, this cemetery is big and difficult to navigate.  I'm trying to reach office in advance to confirm hours and everything.  Can't reach them so far.  Details:

Washington Cemetery
Address: 5400 Bay Parkway, New York, NY 11230
Phone: (718) 377-8690
Charles Gordon
Death: May 9, 1918
Burial: May 18, 1918
Visit: Saturday, Oct 6

Washington Cemetery (Jewish) McDonald Avenue and Bay Parkway, Brooklyn, NY 11230, Washington (Brooklyn) Founded 1867 County: Kings/Brooklyn 5400 Bay Parkway at MacDonald Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11230 718-377-8690 Records can be retrieved alphabetically by deceased's last name, chronologically by date of burial, and by burial society. They have excellent maps of each burial society plot area.

Apparently, sections of the cemetery were managed by "Associations" that could represent county of origin.  So I did a search for "Washington Cemetery" and "Association" and found this:

• http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/lia-sg-vilnius.htm

Not useful yet, though.  My great-grandparents' marriage certificate cites "Horodischer Bros" as performing the ceremony, but I don't see that group listed.

Death Certificate Arrives

A death certificate for Charles Gordon (my great grandfather) arrived today.  Here's a PDF of the document.  This document confirmed several things:  The home address I'd been finding in city directories and other resources, the date of death, and the names of his parents.  The spelling of his mother's name is different from what was in the marriage certificate, unless I'm just reading the handwriting wrong. (How do people read these things?)  The new bits of info relate to the burial including the name of the cemetery, which I didn't have until now.  I'm not sure I can read it though - Washington Cemetery?  Looks like the burial date is Mar 19, 1918.  The undertaker is Abe Friedman(?) and the address is 113 something... 

I found a Washington Jewish Cemetery in Brooklyn - I'm assuming that is the place.  Here's a picture:

Image from Flickr user basheem

I can't find information online about accessing records, but this site gives some information about what you can find if you visit the cemetery:

At the office in Washington Cemetery, there is a set of ledgers that list births in chronological order, giving the decedent's address and the cause of death, the name of the burial society and possibly additional facts. That may provide information now missing from an old, eroded gravestone. 

I'd like to visit the next time I'm in the area! For one thing, I'm wondering if his wife would be buried in the same cemetery.  She re-married twice after his death, and I'm not sure of the spelling of the last name of her last husband. 

Marriage Certificate!

Got my great-grandparents' marriage certificate in the mail!  Here's a link to the PDF.

From the marriage certificate, I (supposedly) now have the names of all four great-great grandparents, but the handwriting is really tough.  Here are all the details from this doc, according to my initial attempt to figure it out:

Groom:
    Name:  Charles Gordon
    Address:  137 Suffolk St, NY, NY
    Occupation: Painter
    Birthplace: Russia (Was hoping for a town, but no such luck)
    Father's name:  Israel (no last name given, so do I assume "Gordon" is original?
    Mother's maiden name:  Esther Ossofsky ? Or something like that...

Bride:
    Name:  Annie Cohn
    Address:  127 hindlow st. (almost certain I'm reading that wrong)
    Birthplace: Russia
    Father's name:  Tevew (Probably reading that wrong, too)
    Mother's maiden name:  Chaie Clursky ???

Ceremony performed by:  Mendel Sampro??
Horodisclie??? Bros Ben??? As???
109 Cudlow St??

Witnesses:  Mosel Kaplan and Sam Meir?

The next thing I'll do is focus on trying to track down Israel Gordon.  If the family stuck with Jewish tradition, my grandfather would have been named Israel, too, rather than Isadore.  And I did find a NYC birth certificate for an Israel Gordon for his correct birthdate.  Nothing for Isadore.  Would they have named hims Israel and then changed it for some reason?  Not sure.

The name "Gordon" is original to parts of Russia, especially an area called Grodno in what is or was Belarus.  So I'll start focusing there.

Also ordered Charles Gordon's death certificate, which hasn't arrived yet.  But comparing the handwriting on his parents' names may help figure out some of the spelling.

Charles Gordon

So one of the goals of my genealogy research is to try to find out what my Great Grandfather's last name was.  He was born in Russia in the late 1800s and emigrated to New York City.  We don't know if "Gordon" is an Americanized version of his last name or original.  Also don't know if Charles was his real first name, actually.  From family oral history, we know he married another Russian emigre named "Anna Cohen" and died fairly young in an accident.  He had 4 kids: Isadore (my grandfather), Lee, Henrietta and George.

So I've been working on this for a while now, and one thing I've found is that my grandmother's last name was actually Cohn and she usually went by Annie rather than Anna.  Using the wonderful Italian Genealogy group website, I've searched for death and marriage records.  I ordered what I thought was Charles Gordon's death record, but when I received it I realized it was definitely not him based on all the other information on the document.  So that was a learning experience.  But now I've found (and ordered) both a marriage record and a death record that I believe are correct!  Here's the marriage info from the Italian Gen site:

Cohn Annie Dec 21 1907 Manhattan 32926 C500
Gordon Charles Dec 21 1907 Manhattan 32926 G635

And the death info:

Gordon Charles 29 y May 9 1918 15819 Manhattan G635 

I'm more confident this time because of a lot of little bits of information.  But one big bit is that I think I found a couple of newspaper articles about the accident.  Here's a link to the main one from the Chronicling America site.  The article is in the upper right of the page:    

Here's a bit of the OCR'd text from the article, describing the death of Charles Gordon:


Just before it reached Convent A**
nue an automobile owned and drhrei
by Charles Gordon, of 2641 Jeromi
Avenue, turned into 145th Street
ahead of it. Nolan'3 wild clang*?uj of
the gong and the shrieks of the pas
sengers did not reach him in time for
him to pull out of the tracks.
Autoist Is Killed
The car crashed into the auto, de?
molishing it and continued on its way,
pushing a part of the wrecked machine
along ahead of it. The impact threw
Gordon backward from his seat He
burst through the glass of the for?
ward platform of the car, narrowly
missing Nolan, and his body finally
came to rest halfway down the aisle.
He died fifteen minutes after at
reached Harlem Hospital.

The date on the article matches the date on the death certificate, and the address is in the Bronx where I know they lived.  So I'm pretty anxious to get the death certificate in the mail, because it should include his parents names and may include more information about where exactly in Russia he was from.  These docs should arrive in the next couple of weeks.