I was discouraged that the 84-year-old man for whom I recently discovered a paper trail had not called me back after two voice messages and a two-page letter with a photograph that I mailed. He might not be alive, or I had not reached him at the right place. Even if it were the right guy, he might not remember the family, or he wasn’t interested in calling. The odds, I calculated, were against me, but my great family history mystery needed his help. The Back Story My grandmother, Evelyn, spoke little about her mother, Selma. They parted ways when Evelyn left Chicago after her Roosevelt Senior High School graduation in February 1932. Evelyn told us that her mother’s maiden name was Stein and that she had been born in Germany. But, Selma became a missing person on the family tree after she divorced Martin Ackerman the same year that Evelyn left for New York. The Photograph We had only one photograph for that side of the family, and it wasn’t Selma. Someone once said I looked like the young girl in the picture who wore a homemade dress with various ribbons. It was taken in a Thorn, Poland, photography studio in the late 1800s. On the back of the photo, in Evelyn’s handwriting, it clearly read, “Grandmother as a girl.” I never knew for certain that it was a picture of Selma’s mother, but since Martin was an immigrant from Kiralyhaza, Hungary, it didn’t make geographical sense that his mother would be in Thorn, a former German-speaking part of West Prussia. Probably it was Selma’s mother. My Quest     For the first several years, I attended meetings of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington and posted to the early JewishGen Family Finder, bulletin board, and later e-mail digest. I said that I was seeking information about Selma Stein or Selma Ackerman. I didn’t know whether she used her maiden name after her 1932 Chicago divorce. Both names appeared on the U.S. Social Security Death Index, and I ordered several death certificates from Illinois, Florida, and New York that weren’t for my Selma. No Illinois marriage indexes were available for the years Selma might have remarried. I always considered that she died using another surname, but I was at a loss for how to proceed. The Son I searched for everyone else around her. First there was Selma’s son, Ben. In Evelyn’s possessions, after she died of Alzheimer’s disease on April 8, 1998, in Rocky Hill, Connecticut, was one letter from her brother Ben. Dated in 1963, he wrote, “I have not heard from or about mother for many years. Do you have any kind of news about her? My last contact back east was before the war and that was when I spoke with Uncle Charlie. What ever happened to him?” An online California death index revealed that Ben died of a heart attack while skiing in 1968, the year after I was born. The Parents To my surprise, Selma’s parents had come to America, and they left a paper trail a mile long. Once I obtained a copy of Selma’s Chicago divorce papers, they led me to her marriage record in Indiana. On the marriage record, it listed her as born in Seckenberg, Germany, and her parents as Henry and Rosa Stein. On the 1920 U.S. Census, I found a Henry and Rosa Stein who immigrated in 1909. It said Rosa was born in Lessen, Germany. When I searched for a passenger record for Selma, I couldn’t find one, but when I searched for Henry, I found a Hans Stein traveling with a Rosa Danriger and a Selma Ragdichanski who were of the same ages that my Rosa and Selma would have been. Next, I found Henry Simon Stein in a naturalization index and requested his citizenship papers. Those papers stated that he was born in Wistylen, Poland Russia, as “a German subject.” When I searched the Social Security Death Index, it led me to a 1934 death certificate and to the burial location for Henry at Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago. According to his death certificate, his birth location was Königsberg, Germany. Rosa was buried next to Henry at Waldheim in 1941, but she didn’t have a gravestone. Selma Stein was listed as the next of kin on Rosa Lowenstein Stein’s death certificate, and Rosa’s birth location was listed as Lessen, Germany. And then, poof! Selma disappeared from the paper trail. Did she die shortly after her mother, since she never erected a stone? Was Selma also buried there at Waldheim without a stone? I went to the cemetery office at Waldheim and asked. There was a Selma Ackerman buried elsewhere at Waldheim, but it wasn’t ours. By following the paper trail for Selma, Rosa, and Henry, I amassed a great deal of family history, and although I had previously known only Selma’s whereabouts as late as 1932, now I knew she was alive when her mother died in 1941. But then what? The Brother Another tidbit Evelyn had thrown out to me as a teenager, during one of only two conversations I had with her about genealogy, was that Selma had a brother, Charlie, who changed his surname from Stein to Lowen, Lauder, Lang, or “something like that.” There are many persons named Charles Lang, Lowen, or Lauder in the United States. Without other identifying information placing him somewhere at a time when I could search through U.S. census records or utilize online vital record indexes, I would never be able to match my Charlie Stein to the Charlie L. he became. He had not yet appeared on any documentation about Selma, Rosa, or Henry. I didn’t consider how to narrow down the search for Uncle Charlie for many years, until 2008 when I attended the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies’ (IAJGS) Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Chicago. I decided it was worth the time to search for a document showing his name change. The IAJGS Conference in Chicago     The Circuit County Clerk didn’t appreciate the multitude of name change requests I compiled one day while searching through chancery indexes located in his office. He said, “Don’t waste my staff’s time or the taxpayers’ dollars on a wild goose chase.” I endured silently, figuring that I was a taxpayer, too. In the end, he was right though. None of the Charles Stein name changes were for a Charles Lang, Lauder, Lowen, or even an L name. What I did find perusing the chancery indexes and assorted other materials in that office on that day was a probate record for Henry Stein. It was filed a day after my Henry Stein died in 1934. I placed a request for a copy. Two months and $40 later, I received it in the mail. It listed Henry’s next of kin as Rosa Stein, his daughter Selma Stein, and a son named Charles Lang with a Broadway address in New York City. The Kindness of Strangers Once I had Charlie Lang’s name in New York, I went to Ancestry.com and found him listed in the 1930 census with his wife and son, his World War I and World War II draft registration cards, a New York Times birth announcement for his son Robert Todd Lang, and a passenger manifest for a vacation Charlie took to Europe in 1936 that included the date he was naturalized. I quickly ordered and received a copy of his naturalization record, which included the name Dr. Jim Edlin as a signed witness. Using resources on the New York Italian Genealogical Group website, I found the date of Charlie’s marriage to Selma Marks. I also found a Social Security Death Index record for Charlie in Petoskey, Michigan. I had to refer to MapQuest to see where Petoskey was. Located far north on Lake Michigan, I could not guess why a career New Yorker died there. Moving the MapQuest image around the small town of Petoskey, I saw a cemetery. On the Greenwood Cemetery website was an index to burials, and Charles Lang was listed. I called and asked for a photograph. Not only did the part-time caretaker, Karl Craw­ford, immediately e-mail a photograph of the grave, he also e-mailed a copy of Charlie’s obituary from the local newspaper, the Petoskey News Review. Although the gravestone was in English and didn’t connect him to his father with a typical two-generation Jewish name, the obituary was priceless. It said that Charlie owned a retail store in town, confirmed the same birth date in Germany that I had collected, informed that he came to Petoskey in 1950, and stated that he was survived by “his wife, Ruth; a son, Robert T. Lang of New York City; four grandchildren; and a sister, Miss Selma Lang of Chicago.” Selma Lang! When and why did she change her name to her brother’s changed name? All these years, I was searching for the wrong name, and if a cemetery caretaker had not taken the time to look up a local obituary in the town library, without my asking him to, I would never have known to look for my Selma Stein Ackerman as Selma Lang. Selma’s Twilight Armed with the new name, it only took me a few hours online and on the telephone to find Selma’s death certificate and burial location, talk to staff at her former nursing home, and discover the cemetery where she was buried. Selma was buried in the Glenwood Annex of Montrose Cemetery in Chicago in 1983, in a pauper’s grave without a headstone. At age 90, she died of a cardiopulmonary arrest with congestive heart failure and decubitus ulcerus. The nursing home she lived in had no information about next of kin or how long Selma had lived there. Evelyn was 69 and living in East Hartford, Connecticut, at the time. Her Alzheimer’s disease didn’t affect her ability to live alone until several years later. I wondered if Evelyn knew about her mother’s death. It’s a Small Jewish World Once I charted the documents I found for my great-great-uncle Charlie’s family. I knew the names of his two wives, one son, and four grandchildren. I had a birth date for his son, Robert Todd Lang, in 1924. Now I faced the same problem I had earlier with Charles Lang. Robert Lang was a popular name and, at age 84, I had no way of knowing if our Robert Lang was still alive. So, I did what all good Jewish genealogists do, I placed an inquiry on the JewishGen Discussion Group. It read: I seek information about Robert LANG, born circa 1924–1925 NYC, or any of his descendants. We are related. I have information to share. Robert’s parents were Charles LANG and Selma MARKS. Charlie was vice president of Capri Frocks, Inc., 1372 Broadway, NYC in the 1940s. That day, a friend in San Francisco, Rosanne Leeson, responded: Hi Ellen, I may know your family! However, to my knowledge the son of the Selma Marks Lang and her husband Charlie was named Todd. Selma’s sister was Ruth Marks Edlin, and she and her husband were very close friends of my parents. Ruth’s husband was Dr. James Edlin, an extremely close colleague and friend of my father’s. They were like family to me. I believe that Todd still lives somewhere in Westchester County, NY, possibly in Scarsdale. Check Switchboard or another online directory! Should this be the person you are looking for, you can tell him that it was Rosanne Dryfuss, Dr. Dryfuss’ daughter, who gave you the tip ;-)! We never met, though I heard enough about him. He should recognize my maiden name, too! I corresponded with his aunt until a few years back, when the mail was returned. I do not know if she died then or went into a home. I still miss her, as she was my last link to my parents and their close friends—and I guess, my youth. I loved her dearly! Do let me know if this is the right Lang! Best, Rosanne Todd Lang, not Robert Lang? Well, his full name was Robert Todd Lang, but when did he drop the Robert? This was another name variation that might have thrown me for decades, tracking down the wrong person again. Because of Rosanne’s tip, I found Todd Lang’s Scarsdale telephone number online. I called several days later after I compiled my notes and thought about what to say. Although I have called dozens of distant relatives over the last 20 years doing family history research, I was never more nervous than when making this call. I suppose the stakes were high, because I had given up any hope of hearing about Selma from someone who actually knew her. After all, Selma was born in 1893, 115 years ago. Closure When I first learned that my great-grandmother, Selma, died in the summer of 1983 when I was 15 years old, I was angry that I never knew about her or had the opportunity to meet. I thought it must have been terrible for her to live out her senior years without family. Selma’s relationship with her daughter, Evelyn, had been severed in the 1930s. Her son, Ben, had moved to and died in California a generation earlier. Although he had three stepsons, Thomas, Mark, and Scott, I’ve never located them. I’m not certain they would have known about a step-grandmother in another city anyway. I wondered if Selma knew that she had three grandchildren and six great-grandchildren on my side of the family. The two-page letter that I mailed to Todd Lang on November 13, 2008, explained my quest. I wrote, “I don’t know that you are alive, and my wish is that you are healthy and willing to share photos and family stories. If not, I hope this letter reaches the hands of one of your children.” I could not have been happier when I answered the telephone on the Sunday before Thanksgiving and heard, “Hello. This is Todd Lang and I’m alive!” After initially speaking, my mind was eased somewhat. Todd remembered his aunt Selma and helped her out financially. Her life was difficult, and he said that his father Charlie had done the same. Oddly, Todd didn’t know Evelyn. Although he remembered meeting Selma’s son, Ben, he had never heard of my grandmother. As impossible as this idea was to me, I had to accept that Todd would not shed light on Selma and Evelyn’s falling out. Like other mother-daughter relationships, what happened between them apparently remained only with them. Todd saw Selma at his father’s 1966 funeral in Michigan and described her as not being lucid. He said she had dreams and said things such as, “You should travel to Germany to dig up the treasure. There’s buried treasure there.” Perhaps Selma suffered from advanced dementia, mental illness, or Alzheimer’s disease as early as 1966 and until her demise in 1983, or maybe, there was a treasure. I like to think I found it. I will never know what separated Evelyn and Selma or what Selma’s Jewish name was, but I now know when she died and where she’s buried. I know where in Germany she was born and that she never remarried. After her divorce, she worked in a retail store in Chicago and had friends. I know that she and her brother, Charlie, were close and that her only nephew, Todd, considered her family. I might soon see Selma’s image for the first time though. Do I resemble her? Todd is searching for family photographs of Selma, Henry, and Rosa hidden away in his attic. I am contacting archives in Poland and Germany for vital records in the Königsberg area of East Prussia, and I will erect a headstone for Selma. My dad and I already erected one for Rosa a few years ago. There are 21 new names on my family tree thanks to Uncle Charlie, cousin Todd, and their descendants, and I look forward to exploring more mutual family history with them. Ellen Shindelman Kowitt is a former IAJGS board member, a past president of the JGS of Greater Washington, and an early JewishGen ShtetlSchlepper Group Leader to Ukraine. Ellen lectures, instructs classes, and writes about doing Jewish genealogy. She lives in Colorado with her husband and two daughters.