Flora Satt's 1950 master's thesis

In 1950, Flora Satt, a descendant of  Saul Baruch Milstein was attending Colorado University in Boulder, CO.  She was about 25 years old.  Her mother was Ethel Milstein.  Her grandfather was Menash Milstein.  And her gr grandfather was Saul Baruch Milstein.

We now know that Saul Baruch Milstein and his family did not arrive on their ship until December 1884, after the Colony had disbanded.   So while Flora is not a descendant,  she would have been closely related to numerous people who were at Cotopaxi, or descended from the Colonists.

Her research was excellent for 1950.  Her thesis is well documented.  It has been titled "unpublished thesis" - but that would only apply to then - things change.

Prior to her death in 2014, Flora gave permission to my brother, Nelson Moore, to publish her thesis.  She did not give that permission to anyone else.  You can read it in it's entirety with footnotes and bibliography here:

The Flora Satt Thesis on Cotopaxi

she titled the bibliography "critical bibliography" ,  I would interpret the word "critical" to mean "absolutely necessary".

Nelson's website link is cotopaxi-colorado.com.    He has had this current website up since 2001.  He had other websites before that.  His web pages clearly state that they are copyright protected.  That's the first clue that you do not have permission to copy anything from that page....but you can certainly link to that page.  Why does anyone do this?  To "protect" what is written.  To keep someone else from altering it, using it, making money from it.

Within the past year, a Saltiel living in London has created a new website.  The exact same title as Nelson's website minus the hyphen.  Of all the possible names to pick from, why did he pick that name?  Most likely for the same reason people tried to create an eBay.net website!  To get readers to go to their site, to capitalize on the work already done.

I do not go to that website for one reason only:

The author(s) of that website copied Flora Satt's thesis.  They then inserted their own comments about her writing.  And then they published it on that website.

HUGE Copyright violation!!!

It makes no sense that someone would create a new website so unquestionably identical to a website already existing, then take work from the existing website and publish it on their website.  Their intent was outright theft of website content.   They use the excuse that they cannot contact Satt's heirs for permission.  That's not how copyright law works.  If you don't have permission, you do not post.

Flora's thesis has been such a blessing to me.  I think of how much research she had to do at such a young age.  With no internet.  No email.  The newspapers had not been digitized, so she would have sat and gone through each newspaper page by page, column by column.  I often come across little checkmarks beside an article about Cotopaxi - I wonder if it was her mark.  I like to think it might have been.

She gave us oral stories, family histories and I could not have started my research without her footnotes and her critical bibliography.  For that I am ever grateful.  May her memory be a blessing to those of us who follow the Cotopaxi story.

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The 1885 census - it's such a mess!

Here's what I will show you in this blog about searching census records:

1)  Some websites skip a column or page from a census when indexing it
2)  Some websites have much better scans of images than other websites
3)  People who read the handwriting and typed it in made a lot of mistakes - some rather significant
4)  Be sure to compare the sex of a person, the date of birth, and the order of the family
5)  Find a relative or neighbor of your family first, then use that to find your family living close by
6)  Remember that at the turn of the century, a lot of families moved/lived together in clusters.
7)  Take your time - what you are looking for is probably there!

First off....there is no 1885 census for Fremont County.  But there is!  The story goes that someone found an alphabetized list of the 1885 Census tucked up in the top of the rafters of a basement somewhere here in town.  And that list is at the local history center.  So if you want to see if a person lived here in 1885, you can do that.  But it doesn't show what family they were living with or who their neighbors were....it's just an alphabetical list.  It has never been transcribed so you won't find it anywhere except by visiting the local history center!

I have used it to prove that none of the Cotopaxi Colonists were here in 1885.  Neither was Saltiel, Hart, Tobias or Schwarz.

But the bigger mess is Denver and how ancestry.com and familysearch.org have failed us in the digitization and indexing of names.  While I am using the families who were at Cotopaxi in my example, you can use the process for any name, any year, any location.

I first found the Shames family living downtown Denver in the 1885 census at ancestry:

I took this image, put it into photoshop, converted it to a "stamp" and could finally see that it was:

Isaac Shames with his daughters Rachel Shames and Nettie Washington.  And I already knew from the Cotopaxi documents that Isaac had a daughter married to Joe Washington (later shortened to Washer).

Ancestry had transcribed this as:

This is on the bottom left of page 42, Arapahoe County, District 5 if you subscribe to ancestry and want to look it up.

I found his 2 brothers, S. Malsten and B. Muhlstein above him.

I felt that the Colonists probably lived close together in Denver, so I started looking at pages on this census before and after the Shames/Milstein family.  In the next column on this page, I found the Krupitsky, Prezant and Toplitsky families.

Krupitsky had been transcribed as Ruhhitsky.  (OK, trust me, this did not all happen on the same day!  I have been working on this for the last 10 years!!)

Prezant - transcribed as Trissoml 

Toplitsky - transcribed as Tehiock

It takes patience....and great skill to really understand the 1885 census!

I'm going to use Prezant as my example here.  After taking the image and working on it in Photoshop, I was pretty sure the surname was Priscrant.  And it is clear enough on the first names:

Chas, age 30

Carrie, age 28

Joseph, age 11

Sarah, age 7 7/12.

I had already found their ship's manifest:

Here they were transcribed as:

Zattel Breisand, age 28, born 1854
Kele Breisand, age 26, born 1856
Itzag Breisand, age 8, born 1874
Hirsch Breisand, age not given, presumed to be a newborn, so given a date of 1882.

And I had found them in the 1900 census in Denver as:

Charles Prezant, age 45
Clara Prezant, age 43
Sarah Prezant, age 15, born Nov 1885
Etta Prezant, age 14, born Mar 1886
Nettie Prezant, age 11, born Sep 1888
Belle Prezant, age 9, born Aug 1890
Rosa Prezant, age 8, born 1892
Jessie Prezant, age 2, born Sep 1897
Abrie Prezant, age 4, born Oct 1895
Eda Prezant, age 1, born Jul 1898

Clara stated that she had given birth to 14 children, 9 were still living.  Eight were still living at home.  Their oldest son, Joseph, was married and living next door to Michael Shames and his family in Weld County.  They were all farmers.  In the 1900 Census, Joseph is age 26, making him born about 1873.


That makes him age 11 in 1885.  That lines up with Joseph in the 1885 Census above, and Itzag, age 8, in 1882 on the ship's manifest.  But where is Hirsch?  And notice, Clara could not have had a child born in Nov 1885 and another born in Mar 1886!   Read the census!!!

All of these records came from ancestry.com.  Next, I wanted to see what was on familysearch.org.  So I took a look there and wow!  What a difference in the scans of the census!  Familysearch is so much better!!!



That's Isaac Shames, and his daughters Rachel and Nettie.  Transcribed as Shamus and Warsburger.

 I could not find the Presents by searching. I found them by simply looking at column 2 on this page:

Familysearch skipped the entire right hand column of this page when they transcribed the census!  Not a single family will show up when you do a search!  The only way to find these families is to "know" where to look - you find them in ancestry first, then go to familysearch to look at the better scan!  What a pain!!!

So how many people have missed finding their families because they do not go page by page looking for them?

How many people can't find a family because of the transcription of a surname?

I grew up in a fairly small farming community in Indiana and a long time ago, I went through the 1930 census and corrected the spelling of all the surnames for that township.  Because I knew how the names were spelled.  And for such a small community, I couldn't believe the number of surnames that had been incorrectly typed.  I could read them clearly, but someone who did not know what the names were....I could see how they could get it wrong just by looking at handwriting and not knowing what the name was.  It was a fascinating lesson in research for me!

So take Denver in the 1885 census and these are Yiddish speaking Russian Germans.  No wonder the names were handwritten the way they were....and then the person who indexed these had to simply guess at what the letters in the handwriting were - especially when you look at the poorly scanned image on ancestry.

And yes - ancestry and family search have different transcriptions of what the surname is.  The records were independently transcribed by each agency and they simply do not match up!

I have found things on ancestry that I cannot find on other websites.  And vice versa.  That's why I look at the census and read it line by line.  Yes - it takes an incredible amount of time.  But I have found things that no one else can find.  And now, you know why!!!

Next up - a closer look at the Prezant family.

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How far do you go with your genealogy research?

I mentioned in the last blog that I couldn't find Saul Ber Milstein in the 1900 census.  Not sure, but I may have to give up on this one.

Business are not listed in the census.  That should be clue number one.

In the 1900s, a lot of people rented small rooms in the rear of a business.  Cheap rent.  And the census takers may well have missed these tiny apartments.  Just something to keep in the back of your mind.

I found this early map of Denver:

And with a bit of research, I learned that Walnut street on this map was also Market Street.  I was looking for 137 Market street which would be in the 100 block - where the red 61 is.  I was also looking for Colfax Street between Bryant and Clay St....which we can see just to the west of the 100 block of Market street.



This whole are is now gone...buried under the I-25/Colfa intersection.  But it shows you right where the Colfax viaduct was!

In the 1897, 1898, 1899 and 1900 city directories, Suel B Milstein lived at 137 Market Street.  His meat market was between Bryant and Clay.

In the 1901 city directory, S. B. Milstein lived at 2532 W Colfax

So while S B Milstein is not listed in the 1900 census, I can still go to that census and find these streets and go house to house looking to see if I can find a surname that was incorrectly transcribed.  Trust me, I have found many such errors over the years.

However, when I tracked down 137 Market Street....here's the page from the census:

The street is written down the left side of the margin.  The first number is the house number.  There is no 137 Market street.  I checked several pages before and after this just to make sure it wasn't put on the wrong page.  I did the same thing for everything on Byrant and Clay streets and the cross streets. And the same for the 1901 address on W Colfax....which was where they had moved their butcher shop to.  Nothing.

So I can only assume that they were missed in the census count since they were there in the city directories.  The other possibility is that they were moving during the 2 week period the census was being taken.  That's always a possibility.

I'm sharing this for 3 reasons.

1)  My research is pretty thorough.  I don't trust ancestry or familysearch to have correctly digitized or transcribed names.  I believe in human errors.  We all make them!

2)  You can do the very same thing in an attempt to find your family.  Sadly, the streets have not been indexed and 1900 is tough to do.  You can find an enumeration district and from there, get a description of the boundaries of each section.  Comparing that to a map of the same timeframe, you can almost figure out which precinct to look at.  Most are between 20 and 50 pages.  You sit and scan each page one by one.  There is no map that matches precincts to this census.  Fortunately, we do have great maps for the 1930 and 1940 census.

3).  Some of the microfilmed scans have complete areas of black.  When that happens within a neighborhood I am searching, I can assume my family might have been blacked out with the scan.  But there were no such areas in the neighborhood where the Milsteins were living.

The great news is that when you are searching for one family, you very likely will find another that you are searching for.  I possibly located the Grupitsky's and the Shutter's while searching this precinct and I had not perviously found them in the 1900 census.  Their surnames were horribly transcribed, but the dates of birth line up with the children in the families.

It takes time.  It's not easy.  But those old city directories give us a house number and a street name and they can and do often line up with what is in the census.

Now - you won't have this luck with Cotopaxi!  There were no street names written in the margins.  No house numbers assigned.  I don't think there were any in 1900.  It simply was the McCoy double house, The Hendricks house....they were called by the owners name.  But then, Cotopaxi didn't have quite the population that Denver had!!!

I have concluded that the Saul Ber Milstein family was missed in the 1900 census.  But who knows, maybe one day I will find them!  They did have a farm in Golden (but I didn't find them in the Golden Census) until at least 1897.  I have found all of their children in the 1900 census and did not find them within several ages of each child.   Lots of families back then lived close to children, so there's another place you can hunt for someone.

How thorough is your research?  How in-depth do you go?  To what length do you try to find someone before you put that aspect on hold?  And like I've said before, keep returning to the subject because new records are always being added to the digitized collections, new records are being found, and fellow researchers might have found exactly what you are looking for!

*****
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Nettie & Jacob - a true love story with a few problems!

Nettie and Jacob Muhlstein (was Milstein) were first cousins who fell in love.....and stayed in love. Of the 3 weddings that happened to the Cotopaxi Colonists, theirs is the only marriage that survived.  And survive, it did!

I consider Flora Satt's thesis to contain some of the best material written about the Colony.  Here's what she wrote about Nettie & Jacob:

Thus it was that in 1878 Jacob Milstein left Brest Litovsk to seek out land for members of his family and those others who wished to emigrate with them.  He was to act as "advance scout" and to send back all the information on homesteading to his uncle, the leader of the proposed 'colony'.  Was the American government really as tolerant of Jews as they had been led to believe?  No special taxes?  Freedom of worship?  While he was learning these things, as well as the English language, his uncle Saul Baer would send him a monthly allowance to cover his living and travelling expenses.  But within a year of his departure from Russia Jacob had incurred the wrath of his uncle.  He received no more money and for a time the gravity of his offense threatened the plans for the entire group's migration.  Jacob's "sin" had been to persuade Nettie Milstein, Saul Baer's eldest child, with whom he had been in love for some time, to run away and join him in America where they could be married.  Nettie was her father's favorite child, and he had lavished on her all his affection and material wealth.  He had educated her as thoroughly as any of his sons and had taken her with him on business trips throughout Europe.  By the time she was twenty years old, in 1878, a confirmed spinster by Jewish standards, she was able to relieve her father of many of his duties at the commission house, in order that he might devote more time to his studies and pupils, as she preferred a business career to marriage, having refused to accept any of the suitors offered her by the "shadchens".  She was in love with Jacob, her first cousin, and since her father naturally opposed such a union, Nettie simply rejected marriage with anyone else, but when Jacob left Russia and the all-pervasive influence of his patriarchal uncle, Saul Baer, Nettie was impelled to flee and disregard convention, religion and social ostracism by going to Jacob in America.  Leaving Brest Litovsk in November of 1879, Nettie journeyed to the home of relatives in Hamburg, Germany, where she awaited passage money from her fiance.  Cut off from his uncle's support, Jacob Milstein took a job in a tin factory in New York City.  He learned English rapidly and also earned enough to put some aside as 'capital' with which to prospect for a colony site as well as passage money for his bride-to-be from Germany.  But he had worked little more than a year when an industrial accident deprived him of the sight of one eye.  It is noteworthy for those days that the owner of the factory recognized his responsibility in the matter of the accident and made arrangements for a pension to be paid his young employee-victim.  Jacob was thus able to afford proper medical care and rest without resorting to charity.  While recuperating, he became acquainted with the work being done by the well-know American Jew, Michael Heilprin.

Now, I think that's a pretty good story.  UNTIL....I found Nettie and Jacob's marriage certificate in Cotopaxi and UNTIL I found the ship's manifest for Nettie.

Let's review the ship's manifest first.  Yes, Nettie did come to America on a ship with her Uncle, Isaac Shames.  But she did not arrive her until July, 1882 - AFTER the Colonists were already in Cotopaxi!!!

Starting near the top and coming down, let me type the names with today's knowledge of who these people were.  About 9 lines down at the bottom of the crosslines:

Schammes, Itzig  49  (Isaac Shames)
Schammes, Riwke 47 (his wife, said not to have been in Cotopaxi, but was on the ship)
Schammes, Judel  17
Schammes, Chane  9 (Hanna)
Schammes, Rachel 5
Wassitzer, Scheick 18 (Joe Washer)
Wassitzer, Jente 18 (Nettie Washer became Nettie Altman, a daughter of Isaac Shames)
Breisand, Zattel 28 (Charles Perzant)
Breisand, Kele 26 (Clare Prezant - she had 2 sisters in Cotopaxi:  Freida Shames and Hanna Milstein)
Breisand, Itzig 8 (we think this is Joseph Presant)
Breisand, Hirsch 0 (we do not know what happened to him)
Milstein, Jente 18 (Nettie, daughter of Saul Ber, niece of Isaac Shames)
Milstein, Jankel 9 (Jacob, Nettie's brother, son of Saul Ber, nephew of Isaac Shames)
Schames, Freida 22 (wife of Michael Shames who is Isaac's son.  Michael was already at Cotopaxi    Sister of Clare Present above)
Schames, Ester 2 (daughter of Michael and Freida Shames)
Schames, Sara 0 (daughter of Michael and Freida Shames)

So, we can verify that it was true that Nettie Milstein came to America with her uncle, Isaac Shames.

BUT (and this is a rather significant note) the ship did not arrive here until July 16, 1882!!!

So when her daughter, Rose Ornstein, wrote in her diary that her parents were married in Central City in January 1882 - I don't think that actually happened!

Flora gave us these footnotes:

2. Jacob Millstein, 19, with his wife Nettie, 20. (The spelling of the name was changed on the
marriage license issued at Blackhawk, 1882)

37. In Novembver, 1881, Jacob Milstein left New York to survey the prospects in Colorado, and to look up Julius Schwartz. He never found Schwartz. From Blackhawk, Jacob sent for Nettie, his fiancee. They were married at the Gilpin County Courthouse in January, 1882. Jacob was then engaged in the mule trade. Perhaps to conceal the fact that he and his bride were first cousins, Jacob changed the spelling of his name to Millstein on the marriage certificate. Their children later changed the spelling still further. (Muhlstein)

But there is nothing in the records in Blackhawk, Central City or Gilpin County.   I went to the court house, the clerk & recorders office and there is no record of Nettie or Jacob being there, being married there, or applying for a marriage license application.   I have searched all possible spellings from 1878 to 1883.  Doesn't mean it's not there....I just can't find it.

We also now know that Nettie wasn't 20 years old in 1978, if she was 18 years old in 1882.  Yes, I know people put down the wrong age for a variety of reasons....but hold on, more on that in a minute!

We have found their marriage certificate in Cotopaxi:

It's the marriage license application that provides us with more information:

Nettie was 17 when she applied to be married.  She needed a guardian's permission to get married.  That was her uncle Isaac Shames.  They completed their marriage license application on 8/31/1882 and were married on 9/10/1882 and it was filed 9/27/1882.

If Jacob came to this country in 1878, then Nettie was only 13 years old at that time?  And in love with him?  You know, I have searched numerous ships manifests and cannot find a Jacob Milstein (using every possible spelling of those names) in 1878.  But I can find a possibility in 1880 coming from Breman, being from Russia, being Hebrew.

So, in the marriage license, Jacob is over 21, Nettie is 17.  But in the 1910 census, there is only a 2 year difference in their ages.  In the 1920 and 1930 census, they claim to be the same age.  And I think their ages are important to the overall timeline.

Next, we have to look at her parents and his parents and the ages they have given us.  I put it into a handy spreadsheet:

This leaves a lot to be desired!  Annie was 11 when Jacob Milstein was born?  Probably not!  If you give some thought to these dates, you can start to see the problems that we have.  I cannot find Nettie's parents in the 1900 census, and they were deceased by the 1920 census, as was Benjamin Milstein.

I worked at Social Security back in the 1970s - when absolutely no one born 65 years prior to that had a birth certificate (nor could they obtain one).  We used a process called "best evidence" to establish a date of birth for Medicare entitlement.  It was an interesting aspect of my job to say the least!  But based on that experience, here is what I come up with (look at the far right column).

I started with the best evidence which is Nettie's marriage license application.  Age 17 in 1882.  She would not have lied because if she were older than 18, why get your uncle to act as your guardian?

From there, we know that Jacob said he was over 21.  Was he?  Both of them (and the uncle) all stated that Nettie and Jacob were not related to each other.  I wonder how they ever explained the same surname?  Before I determined Jacob's possible birth dates, I needed to look at his parents.

Annie Milstein was consistent at claiming her date of birth as 1850.  Until her burial.  A 6 year difference.

Benjamin went from 1845 to 1847.  If Jacob was born in 1860, his mother was 10 and his father was 13?  So you have to build a "picture" of parent-to-child possibilities.

I have no problems with Nettie's parents as they were older and their dates work.

This is how I came up with my conclusions on the far right.  And when I find more evidence to support something different - I'll change them.

This, then, significantly changes the love story of Nettie and Jacob.  If she was 17 when she married Jacob, she was not 20 in 1878 as Flora Satt claimed.  But it does work with the fact that Ed Grimes was 17 when he arrived at the Colony.  The family stories tell us that Ed was in love with Nettie and while he knew she was in love with Jacob, he still followed her to Cotopaxi in the hopes that she might change her mind.  When he realized that wasn't going to happen, he walked all the way to Denver!
   
Interesting note is that Ed Grimes did marry into the Milstein family at a later date.

What if the story was rewritten for this timeline?  Jacob was sent to America as a scout about 1880.  Nettie, then 15, was working for her father, yet in love with Jacob, her cousin.  She left her parents and came to this country with her Uncle, Isaac Shames, in July, 1882.  Her younger brother, also named Jacob, came with her as did many other relatives.  Nettie's parents, Saul and Mira Milstein and the rest of her sibling arrived in December 1884, after the colonists had left Cotopaxi, and more than 2 years after Nettie and her brother Jacob, had arrived.

Then we have the story that Saul Milstein had been sending Jacob a stipend and that stopped when the elder Milstein realized that his nephew wasn't going to stop pursuing his daughter.  Jacob went to work in a factory and lost the sight of his eye in a boiler accident.  Again, I cannot find any newspaper reference to this accident, although there were many such accidents in New York City at that time.

It is interesting that Jacob still pursued working with his Uncle to find a place for his family to farm....even after his stipend was cut off.  Was this due to his great love for Nettie?  It's the only logical explanation.

Jacob came to Colorado in 1881 looking for Julius Schwartz.  When he did not find him, he took work in Central City.  Nettie joined him there, probably in July, 1882.  And while I can find no documentation that they were married there....maybe they were.  At any rate, we next find them in Cotopaxi in August and they were married in September, 1882.

Changes the date somewhat, but the story remains intact.  And their love must have been great because it survived her father, it survived both of them immigrating to America 2 or more years apart, it survived Cotopaxi, and it went on.  They farmed north of Denver.  They had TEN children.  Jacob lived until 1924 and Nettie lived until 1933.  A great romance....even with a few problems!

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Shames - ha Levi?

I have seen numerous family trees on ancestry that state Isaac Shames, a Colonist, was Levite.

So my curiosity was aroused.....mostly because his 2 brothers never show that indicator.  His headstone on his grave does not say that he is, nor does it have the Levite symbol.

Could he be of the tribe of Levi?  Could he be Kohane - a descendant of Aaron?

Isaac Leib M Shames - his parents are Menashe Milstein and Ester Baer.   Flora Satt's thesis gives us this genealogy about Esther's relationship to Isaac Baer Levinsohn:

9. German Jew, author of Nathan der Wiese, leader of 18th Century Enlightenment. Although more famous for his literary and educational ideas than for his social or political theories, Baer Levinsohn is considered the fount of the Russian Neo-Hebraic Renaissance and the figurehead of the 19th century Jewish enlightenment. One of his nieces, Esther Baer, married Menashe Milstein of Brest Litovsk and proved to be a great influence in her husband's home city, a center of Hasidism. In turn, their son Jacob married Malka, the daughter of Rabbi Zalman of Zhitomir, 

So, going up from Isaac Shames we have:

Jacob Milstein (died 1861)
   married to Malta Zalman

Jacob's parents were:

Menace Milstein and Esther Baer

from there, I began googling books on Isaac Baer Levinsohn.  Also spelled Lowensohn.  He was a known as the "father of Haskala" - a form of Judaism.

I found this:

Isaac Baer Levinsohn was born September 2, 1788, in Kremenets, Volhynia into a well-to-do, prominent family.  His father Jehudah Levin, who carried on extensive business with the Polish landowners, knew Polish quite well.

So now, we know that Esther Baer is his niece and Jehudah (Judah) Levin is his father.   And I start filling in a blank family tree....sort of like a story board.  I use pink and blue stickies, write the names on them, and arrange them on a foam core board.  Then I plug it into a tree just like any gentile genealogist would do:

The same book tells me that Jehudah had a brother, Hayyim.

In another book, I find this:

Jekuthiel Solomon, the great-grandfather of Isaac Bar Levinsohn, who acquired considerable weath was a native of Kremenetz.  Levinsohn's grandfather, Isaac, his father-in-law, the wealthy and learned Zalman Cohen, and his father, Judah Levin, who also was a wealthy merchant and was equally popular among Jews and Gentiles, likewise lived there.

But I have a problem with how this is worded.  Levinsohn's father is Judah.

His grandfather is Isaac, who's father-in-law is Zalman Cohen.  But I need to verify that!

Found this at Wikipedia:

His father, Judah Levin, was a grandson of Jekuthiel Solomon, who settled in Kremenetz and acquired considerable wealth, and a son of Isaac, who had married the daughter of Zalman Cohen, famed for his wealth and scholarship. 

which shows us that Levinsohn's father is Judah Levin.

Judah Levin is the grandson of Jekuthiel Solomon.

Judah Levin's father is Isaac and Isaac married the daughter of Zalman Cohen.

This then becomes even more frustrating!  You only have 2 male grandparents and if his mother is the daughter of Zalman Cohen....that is one of his male grandparents.

Thus, his father's father would be Jekuthial Solomon - different surname from his father, Isaac.

And this does happen in Jewish genealogy.  Now, my stickies have been moved, and my "tree" looks like this:

The only way to make Esther Baer a niece of Isaac Baer Levinsohn is that he had a sister.  We don't know her given name and we will assume her maiden name is Levinsohn, so here is her ancestry, tying her into Isaac Baer Levinsohn's father, Judah Levin:

Thus we see that Isaac Lieb Milstein Shames descends from Judah Levin who descends from Isaac Levin, married to a Cohen.....and could well be a Levite.

But it would also mean that Saul Baruch Milstein and Benjamin Z Milstein also descend from the Levites and Cohens as well.  Right now, DNA can only test for Kohane...and there are many questions about the accuracy of the results.

This is how you put together a "family tree" when you don't have all the names.  And while this is perhaps not enough to say that this family is Kohane....I think we can safely say that "ha-Levi" is correct!

Sometime down the line, we'll look at Isaac Baer Levinsohn and his religious views and the possible impact on the Cotopaxi Colonists.  But I needed to do the family tree before I take a look at his influence on their beliefs.

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