I will be giving my presentation "The Jewish Colony at Cotopaxi" this Saturday, Feb 27, at 1 pm in the back room at Design Ur Memories, 518 Main Street, Canon City
This is the presentation that I will be doing next month in Gush Etzion, Judea, Israel. This is going to be from a historical perspective rather than a genealogical view. I plan to cover these issues:
The Cotopaxi area in the late 1800s
Why the Jews wanted to leave Russia
How Emanual Saltiel got involved, what he promised to do, what he didn't do and why.
The past written records and new findings.
The 3 weddings.
The miner's lien.
Saltiel's hotel and who he was.
The cemetery, the records and the road marker.
Those are a few of the things I have been asked to research in the past.
Sorry, this will not be recorded as this is my trial run for the Israeli presentation and I will allow questions at any time during the presentation just so I know what to fix for next month!
If you live in Colorado, I hope you can come. There are chairs for about 20 people but there's always room to sit on the floor!
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Monday, February 20, 2017
Friday, May 20, 2016
Research tools and updates to blog posts
As I find new information, I will go back and update each blog post. Most of that information will be put at the bottom of the post with the word "update" and highlighted in pale blue. You can go to the home page of this blog and in the upper lefthand corner, there is a search box. Just enter the word "update" and it will take you to each blog that has been changed.
For years, I have used ancestry.com. Sometimes I don't pay for a subscription, when I don't have time to research. Sometimes I pay for a basic subscription. If I link to their website, to a census record or a ship's manifest....you won't be able to see what I see, unless you pay for access to their site as well. So in order to let you see what's there, I cut and paste just that portion of their page.
If you want the actual link, and you pay for their services, just let me know. I'll be more than happy to send you the link. And again, you can reach me through a link on the home page of this blog.
For the last 6 months, I have tried out the "all access" account. Yes, it is very, very expensive - $399 per year!!! But it includes a subscription to newspapers.com and fold3.com.
After using this for 6 months, I would definitely recommend it if you have exhausted other sources. I have found so much. I even upgraded the newspapers.com subscription to include the "lifestyle" sections.
But here's a thought. I doubt a ph.d candidate, or someone just looking for a "story" will pay $399 for a subscription to ancestry.....let alone pay for any other research site! My question is, how can you research if you don't exhaust all the possibilities out there?
I have 70 family trees posted on Ancestry. Most of them are private - so no one can see them unless I invite them to do so. 27 of those trees relate to Cotopaxi, either the Jews or the other people living there in 1882. I can quickly look up any relationship, any grave, any person that I find in a newspaper article or other document.
For the most part, I have linked each person in those 27 family trees to every census record, ship's manifest, document, gravesite, newspaper article, etc that is out there. And in this blog, I am trying to share on a very limited basis some of those findings, such as the post on "Finding Little Lena." That post was an attempt to show the genealogist how to read a census, but to also share my findings about that family's history.
I can download any tree in a ged.com file and upload it to my personal software. I use a Mac, so I prefer Reunion, but I have used FamilyTreeMaker for the last 5 years as well. Now that ancestry no longer supports it, I will be going full time to Reunion - I love the style of trees that it creates. I've shared plenty of them in this blog so you can get a feel for how it color codes each generation, making it easy to "count cousins".
The rest of those 70 trees are either my own family, or families of people I'm doing research for. Once again, I have never received a penny of compensation for the work I've done. Well, I take that back. Someone once gave me $50 and I sent it to a charity in Israel. You can feel free to donate anything you want....I've put some links over on the right side of the home page of this blog.
Let's pause here for a moment and talk about links. When you see something underlined, click on it. That will take you to something else - another blog post, a website - something that will help you have further understanding of what I am writing about. Don't just ignore those links. They can be critical to a story....and keep me from repeating myself!
I use familysearch.org. It's free. Has a ton of valuable information. And you can post your trees there as well. This site is sponsored by the Mormon church and I took all of their classes back in the 1980s. I highly recommend that you consider taking their classes if you haven't done so.
Cemeteries. I can't begin to explain the value of walking through a cemetery even though you can see almost every headstone at findagrave.com. There is something about seeing the placement of headstones - who is buried beside your ancestor, that puts a story together. The middle name of your ancestor could be the last name of someone buried in the same row as they are. It's the relationship of headstones, one to another, that you can't see on a website.
I have been to the cemetery of a 3rd great grandmother back in Indiana. Buried next to her is one of her great nephews. Why? It certainly brings questions to mind when you see the actual layout of the headstones and you won't see that on findagrave.com.
Obviously newspapers. Almost every state has a list of historical newspapers and many are free. But many require a subscription. I'd recommend only one at a time - otherwise you'll get overwhelmed!
Libraries. Many old microfilm rolls have not been digitized and are not online at this time. Many of those old newspapers have been microfilmed at the library and are not yet online. I know - it is incredibly hard work to sit and read column after column, page after page of newspapers on a microfilmed roll. But when you find something - it's great!!! I'm heading out later today to take another look at some old Canon City Newspapers. They haven't even been put on microfilm yet!
Clerk & Recorders offices. The same thing. Most of the documents have not even been indexed, let alone digitized. But access is free. I can't begin to count the number of hours I have sat looking at these old ledgers, scanning page after page - just to find a familiar name and then realize it was something that happened in a different part of the county! On the other hand, I have yet to find the land declaration at Cotopaxi for Schradsky and I know they had a farm close to Zedek and Nudelman. I have looked at every single document in 1882 and it's just not there. (ok, that link under those last 4 words will take you to a blog where I've already told you about hundreds of documents being found in a local trash bin - the importance of looking at these links!)
State Archives. In Colorado - it's in a box in storage and you have to decide from an index what box you might want, then make arrangements to go to Denver and physically inventory that box. A lot of museums are the same way. Takes forever to find something, but well worth the search! And when I say "forever" - I have spent days looking for a single item. I don't live in Denver - I'm 125 miles away. So I spend the night with friends, or pay for a hotel and go do my research. It takes money to be a genealogist!
JGSCO.org. I'm a gentile, but I have attended all of the Jewish genealogy classes this group offers....and I have learned so much about my own family tree. The classes forced me outside my normal little box of thinking. Could my ancestors be Jewish. They aren't. But these classes forced me to think differently and I value what I have learned with them.
This past year, JGSCO has focused their training on DNA and again, I have learned so much. Membership is just $30 per year and again, I highly recommend their meetings.
Land records, surveys, patents can all be found at blm.gov - I used this site all the time. Unfortunately, they have not digitized all of their records so manual microfilm searches are still a good source of information.
You can't do it all online. I started this in 1968 before there was a hint of an internet. And in genealogy, you still need to go out in the field and manually search through records one at a time.
Learning how to read 1800s handwriting is critical to your success. The ability to be creative at how a surname might have been spelled, how the spelling might have been changed or why/how a name might have been changed is essential as well. Saltiel, Saltiele, Saltiell, Saltell, Saltwell.....not to mention someone who made a typo, or just wrote it down wrong. Every single surname can be digitized incorrectly. Something as simple as Annie Hart had been digitized as Annie Hurt because someone interpreted the handwriting incorrectly!
Here in this tiny little town of Canon City, we have the library, the history center, the Fremont County Historical Society, the Western Fremont County Historical Society and then the Southern Colorado Genealogical Society in Pueblo. We have a Mormon library in town as well. I'm sure your community has all that or more to offer assistance with your research.
Finally, a reminder about copyright. That's another reason I cut and paste just one line from ancestry. I do not want to violate their copyright laws. And while I have the entire page linked to my family tree, I do pay for the right to use their site.
You will rarely see a newspaper article in it's entirety here. That's a good copyright question. Anything that is over 75 years old is not bound by copyright law. But I have decided to type up each one so that it can be easily searched. I recently paid a lot of money for a digitized book that could not be searched. What a pain! I had to read every single page and then still didn't find what I was looking for! So while I will put my typed versions out here, I do have the original copies in my files.
For this blog, you do not have permission to cut, paste, copy, or reuse anything that I have written. All you have to do is link to an individual page or the blog in general. That's pretty simple. But it protects what I have written in the context I have written it in.
As of today, there are 40 posts in just 3 1/2 months! These post have been viewed 1270 times. I think that's amazing! I hope that the story excites you and that my research hints and tips will help.
With all the resources available today, you can prove your family tree, and you can prove the oral stories that your family has handed down from one generation to the next. And you can prove history. Which is exactly what I'm doing with the history of Cotopaxi and the Jews who were there.
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Any time I quote another source, I will highlight that in pale peach.
When I refer to a document, I will either type it up or cut and past a snippet from it.
In order to help you understand why I cut and paste, I thought I'd help you out with the resources I use as well.
For years, I have used ancestry.com. Sometimes I don't pay for a subscription, when I don't have time to research. Sometimes I pay for a basic subscription. If I link to their website, to a census record or a ship's manifest....you won't be able to see what I see, unless you pay for access to their site as well. So in order to let you see what's there, I cut and paste just that portion of their page.
If you want the actual link, and you pay for their services, just let me know. I'll be more than happy to send you the link. And again, you can reach me through a link on the home page of this blog.
For the last 6 months, I have tried out the "all access" account. Yes, it is very, very expensive - $399 per year!!! But it includes a subscription to newspapers.com and fold3.com.
After using this for 6 months, I would definitely recommend it if you have exhausted other sources. I have found so much. I even upgraded the newspapers.com subscription to include the "lifestyle" sections.
But here's a thought. I doubt a ph.d candidate, or someone just looking for a "story" will pay $399 for a subscription to ancestry.....let alone pay for any other research site! My question is, how can you research if you don't exhaust all the possibilities out there?
I have 70 family trees posted on Ancestry. Most of them are private - so no one can see them unless I invite them to do so. 27 of those trees relate to Cotopaxi, either the Jews or the other people living there in 1882. I can quickly look up any relationship, any grave, any person that I find in a newspaper article or other document.
For the most part, I have linked each person in those 27 family trees to every census record, ship's manifest, document, gravesite, newspaper article, etc that is out there. And in this blog, I am trying to share on a very limited basis some of those findings, such as the post on "Finding Little Lena." That post was an attempt to show the genealogist how to read a census, but to also share my findings about that family's history.
I can download any tree in a ged.com file and upload it to my personal software. I use a Mac, so I prefer Reunion, but I have used FamilyTreeMaker for the last 5 years as well. Now that ancestry no longer supports it, I will be going full time to Reunion - I love the style of trees that it creates. I've shared plenty of them in this blog so you can get a feel for how it color codes each generation, making it easy to "count cousins".
The rest of those 70 trees are either my own family, or families of people I'm doing research for. Once again, I have never received a penny of compensation for the work I've done. Well, I take that back. Someone once gave me $50 and I sent it to a charity in Israel. You can feel free to donate anything you want....I've put some links over on the right side of the home page of this blog.
Let's pause here for a moment and talk about links. When you see something underlined, click on it. That will take you to something else - another blog post, a website - something that will help you have further understanding of what I am writing about. Don't just ignore those links. They can be critical to a story....and keep me from repeating myself!
I use familysearch.org. It's free. Has a ton of valuable information. And you can post your trees there as well. This site is sponsored by the Mormon church and I took all of their classes back in the 1980s. I highly recommend that you consider taking their classes if you haven't done so.
Cemeteries. I can't begin to explain the value of walking through a cemetery even though you can see almost every headstone at findagrave.com. There is something about seeing the placement of headstones - who is buried beside your ancestor, that puts a story together. The middle name of your ancestor could be the last name of someone buried in the same row as they are. It's the relationship of headstones, one to another, that you can't see on a website.
I have been to the cemetery of a 3rd great grandmother back in Indiana. Buried next to her is one of her great nephews. Why? It certainly brings questions to mind when you see the actual layout of the headstones and you won't see that on findagrave.com.
Obviously newspapers. Almost every state has a list of historical newspapers and many are free. But many require a subscription. I'd recommend only one at a time - otherwise you'll get overwhelmed!
Libraries. Many old microfilm rolls have not been digitized and are not online at this time. Many of those old newspapers have been microfilmed at the library and are not yet online. I know - it is incredibly hard work to sit and read column after column, page after page of newspapers on a microfilmed roll. But when you find something - it's great!!! I'm heading out later today to take another look at some old Canon City Newspapers. They haven't even been put on microfilm yet!
Clerk & Recorders offices. The same thing. Most of the documents have not even been indexed, let alone digitized. But access is free. I can't begin to count the number of hours I have sat looking at these old ledgers, scanning page after page - just to find a familiar name and then realize it was something that happened in a different part of the county! On the other hand, I have yet to find the land declaration at Cotopaxi for Schradsky and I know they had a farm close to Zedek and Nudelman. I have looked at every single document in 1882 and it's just not there. (ok, that link under those last 4 words will take you to a blog where I've already told you about hundreds of documents being found in a local trash bin - the importance of looking at these links!)
State Archives. In Colorado - it's in a box in storage and you have to decide from an index what box you might want, then make arrangements to go to Denver and physically inventory that box. A lot of museums are the same way. Takes forever to find something, but well worth the search! And when I say "forever" - I have spent days looking for a single item. I don't live in Denver - I'm 125 miles away. So I spend the night with friends, or pay for a hotel and go do my research. It takes money to be a genealogist!
JGSCO.org. I'm a gentile, but I have attended all of the Jewish genealogy classes this group offers....and I have learned so much about my own family tree. The classes forced me outside my normal little box of thinking. Could my ancestors be Jewish. They aren't. But these classes forced me to think differently and I value what I have learned with them.
This past year, JGSCO has focused their training on DNA and again, I have learned so much. Membership is just $30 per year and again, I highly recommend their meetings.
Land records, surveys, patents can all be found at blm.gov - I used this site all the time. Unfortunately, they have not digitized all of their records so manual microfilm searches are still a good source of information.
You can't do it all online. I started this in 1968 before there was a hint of an internet. And in genealogy, you still need to go out in the field and manually search through records one at a time.
Learning how to read 1800s handwriting is critical to your success. The ability to be creative at how a surname might have been spelled, how the spelling might have been changed or why/how a name might have been changed is essential as well. Saltiel, Saltiele, Saltiell, Saltell, Saltwell.....not to mention someone who made a typo, or just wrote it down wrong. Every single surname can be digitized incorrectly. Something as simple as Annie Hart had been digitized as Annie Hurt because someone interpreted the handwriting incorrectly!
Here in this tiny little town of Canon City, we have the library, the history center, the Fremont County Historical Society, the Western Fremont County Historical Society and then the Southern Colorado Genealogical Society in Pueblo. We have a Mormon library in town as well. I'm sure your community has all that or more to offer assistance with your research.
Finally, a reminder about copyright. That's another reason I cut and paste just one line from ancestry. I do not want to violate their copyright laws. And while I have the entire page linked to my family tree, I do pay for the right to use their site.
You will rarely see a newspaper article in it's entirety here. That's a good copyright question. Anything that is over 75 years old is not bound by copyright law. But I have decided to type up each one so that it can be easily searched. I recently paid a lot of money for a digitized book that could not be searched. What a pain! I had to read every single page and then still didn't find what I was looking for! So while I will put my typed versions out here, I do have the original copies in my files.
For this blog, you do not have permission to cut, paste, copy, or reuse anything that I have written. All you have to do is link to an individual page or the blog in general. That's pretty simple. But it protects what I have written in the context I have written it in.
As of today, there are 40 posts in just 3 1/2 months! These post have been viewed 1270 times. I think that's amazing! I hope that the story excites you and that my research hints and tips will help.
With all the resources available today, you can prove your family tree, and you can prove the oral stories that your family has handed down from one generation to the next. And you can prove history. Which is exactly what I'm doing with the history of Cotopaxi and the Jews who were there.
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Monday, May 9, 2016
DNA and genealogy
A week ago, I attended a full day seminar in Denver on DNA. The speaker was Bennet Greenspan who created Familytreedna.com. He is the go-to source for DNA questions and I decided to ask mine!
But first, a very, very brief intro into DNA and the reasons it's important in genealogy.
yDNA - you test the male of a particular surname. This DNA goes from father to son to son to son forever. In 2001, I had my brother "Moore" tested for my dad's line. I had our mom's brother "House" tested to know the DNA of my mother's father's line.
mtDNA - you test the male for his mother's mother's mother's mother's DNA. And these "markers" are different from the yDNA markers. I had my brother tested for our mother's line.
autosomal DNA - you can test yourself to get the matches for everyone else between your father's line and your mother's line. I had mine done a few years ago. It also shows the probable migration of your ancestors. This will find "lost" cousins and track things like your mother's father's mother's father's line.
A haplogroup is an identifier that puts your DNA together with other people who have similar, but not identical DNA.
Pretty cool! Familtreedna has now tested over 1.2 million people. My brother and uncle were among the very first back in 2001 with kit numbers around 1600. Lots has been learned since those early DNA tests. However, there is no reason to retest because DNA remains the same.
My question for Mr. Greenspan was:
If you have 2 males with the same surname, yet they fall into 2 different haplogroups, can they be related?
His answer (which I have in writing):
You would have to go back 500 to 1000 generations to find a common ancestor. In simpler terms, you might find that you had a 500th gr grandfather in common!
Can we identify that as a cousin? Only from the generic standpoint that all humans are related and thus all humans are cousins.
Is this important to the Cotopaxi story? Maybe. I'll let you decide.
In a prior blog, I posted this family tree for E. H. Saltiel
E. H. Saltiel's oldest son, John Tammany Saltiel, changed his name to John Taman about 1914. He had a son, Osborne J. Taman, who is a direct male descendant of John Saltiel, even though he has a different last name.
Osborne had 2 sons. If they had their DNA tested, it would fall into the same Haplogroup as E. H. Saltiel.
And we can see the ancestry tree for E. H. Saltiel
Next we can go to the Jewish DNA project and look to see if Yomtov Saltiel b 1741 is shown.
He is. You want to look for this line:
Which shows us that E. H. Saltiel would have a DNA of R-m269.
This is known as the Yomtov line.
Anyone who descends for Yom Tob (Yomtov) Shaltiel (Saltiel) will have a DNA haplogroup of R-m269. Further, I have been able to verify E. H. Saltiel's ancestors through census records and other documents in England.
So now we know that E. H. Saltiel and the Taman brothers should have a haplogroup of R-m269.
The Saltiel in London has this family tree.
Verification of this line's DNA can be found here - where we find Elias Saltiel born in 1738. This is known as the North Sea Line.
look for these lines:
Which again show us the Haplogroup is G-M201.
In order for the London Saltiel to be a cousin to E. H. Saltiel, he would have to go back 500 to 1000 generations in order to find a common grandfather in order to establish a cousin connection.
We can safely say that these 2 men are not cousins. They do not have a common ancestor within the past 500 generations. Their DNA is in different Haplogroups.
DNA proves they are not related....even through they share a common surname.
That is example number 1 for Cotopaxi. We have another example.
Isaac Leib Shames and Benjamin Zalman Milstein are brothers. But they have different surnames. In Russia, they were forcing young Jews into the army and they were required to serve 25 years. Think about that....twenty-five long years! One way around this when there were multiple sons in a family was to find a couple who did to have children and let them adopt one of the sons. And this is what happened to Isaac Shames and it's why he changed his name.
He could have changed his name back when he came to America. There was nothing stopping him. But to honor and respect the family who adopted him in order to help him avoid 25 years of Russian military service, he chose to keep the name Shames.
It has now been as much as 5 generations since Cotopaxi. What if a Shames descendant were to marry a Milstein descendant and not realize that they have a common ancestor? DNA can prove that for them! And what if it's another hundred years down the line, you might want to get a DNA test no matter who you marry!
Cotopaxi also has descendants who were adopted (remember the "Finding Lena" blog?) She was a Friedman adopted by a Snyder when she was quite young.
We also have in that same blog the story of Sam and Sarah Shuteran, adopted by Samuel Friedman....and they did not know about this adoption until much later in life. What if they'd married a Shuteran?
First cousins can and do marry and it often works out. But I just think I'd like to know about it before the wedding ceremony!
I'm starting to think that DNA and genealogy go hand in hand. Certainly can prove or disprove the facts of a relationship.
***** c2016Cotopaxi-Colony.blogspot.com All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
But first, a very, very brief intro into DNA and the reasons it's important in genealogy.
yDNA - you test the male of a particular surname. This DNA goes from father to son to son to son forever. In 2001, I had my brother "Moore" tested for my dad's line. I had our mom's brother "House" tested to know the DNA of my mother's father's line.
mtDNA - you test the male for his mother's mother's mother's mother's DNA. And these "markers" are different from the yDNA markers. I had my brother tested for our mother's line.
autosomal DNA - you can test yourself to get the matches for everyone else between your father's line and your mother's line. I had mine done a few years ago. It also shows the probable migration of your ancestors. This will find "lost" cousins and track things like your mother's father's mother's father's line.
A haplogroup is an identifier that puts your DNA together with other people who have similar, but not identical DNA.
Pretty cool! Familtreedna has now tested over 1.2 million people. My brother and uncle were among the very first back in 2001 with kit numbers around 1600. Lots has been learned since those early DNA tests. However, there is no reason to retest because DNA remains the same.
My question for Mr. Greenspan was:
If you have 2 males with the same surname, yet they fall into 2 different haplogroups, can they be related?
His answer (which I have in writing):
You would have to go back 500 to 1000 generations to find a common ancestor. In simpler terms, you might find that you had a 500th gr grandfather in common!
Can we identify that as a cousin? Only from the generic standpoint that all humans are related and thus all humans are cousins.
Is this important to the Cotopaxi story? Maybe. I'll let you decide.
In a prior blog, I posted this family tree for E. H. Saltiel
E. H. Saltiel's oldest son, John Tammany Saltiel, changed his name to John Taman about 1914. He had a son, Osborne J. Taman, who is a direct male descendant of John Saltiel, even though he has a different last name.
Osborne had 2 sons. If they had their DNA tested, it would fall into the same Haplogroup as E. H. Saltiel.
And we can see the ancestry tree for E. H. Saltiel
He is. You want to look for this line:
Which shows us that E. H. Saltiel would have a DNA of R-m269.
This is known as the Yomtov line.
Anyone who descends for Yom Tob (Yomtov) Shaltiel (Saltiel) will have a DNA haplogroup of R-m269. Further, I have been able to verify E. H. Saltiel's ancestors through census records and other documents in England.
So now we know that E. H. Saltiel and the Taman brothers should have a haplogroup of R-m269.
The Saltiel in London has this family tree.
Verification of this line's DNA can be found here - where we find Elias Saltiel born in 1738. This is known as the North Sea Line.
look for these lines:
Which again show us the Haplogroup is G-M201.
In order for the London Saltiel to be a cousin to E. H. Saltiel, he would have to go back 500 to 1000 generations in order to find a common grandfather in order to establish a cousin connection.
We can safely say that these 2 men are not cousins. They do not have a common ancestor within the past 500 generations. Their DNA is in different Haplogroups.
DNA proves they are not related....even through they share a common surname.
That is example number 1 for Cotopaxi. We have another example.
Isaac Leib Shames and Benjamin Zalman Milstein are brothers. But they have different surnames. In Russia, they were forcing young Jews into the army and they were required to serve 25 years. Think about that....twenty-five long years! One way around this when there were multiple sons in a family was to find a couple who did to have children and let them adopt one of the sons. And this is what happened to Isaac Shames and it's why he changed his name.
He could have changed his name back when he came to America. There was nothing stopping him. But to honor and respect the family who adopted him in order to help him avoid 25 years of Russian military service, he chose to keep the name Shames.
It has now been as much as 5 generations since Cotopaxi. What if a Shames descendant were to marry a Milstein descendant and not realize that they have a common ancestor? DNA can prove that for them! And what if it's another hundred years down the line, you might want to get a DNA test no matter who you marry!
Cotopaxi also has descendants who were adopted (remember the "Finding Lena" blog?) She was a Friedman adopted by a Snyder when she was quite young.
We also have in that same blog the story of Sam and Sarah Shuteran, adopted by Samuel Friedman....and they did not know about this adoption until much later in life. What if they'd married a Shuteran?
First cousins can and do marry and it often works out. But I just think I'd like to know about it before the wedding ceremony!
I'm starting to think that DNA and genealogy go hand in hand. Certainly can prove or disprove the facts of a relationship.
***** c2016Cotopaxi-Colony.blogspot.com All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Put your name on your house!!!
They have been doing that for centuries in the northeast. Sometimes it's a family name. Other times they would give it a name like "Spring Lake" or "Robin's Peak". When you drive around in the New England states, you will see the little wood posts on the houses that show you it's name! Sure makes it easy to find the specific place you are looking for!
At Cotopaxi, there were 2 buildings that we know of that were "named". One was "Saltiel". This particular photo has been used to "prove" that the town was once known as "Saltiel".
It's obvious the name is on the building. So I started my research.....looking high and low to find out when the town was called "Saltiel". I can find a single reference to a "Saltiel Park". One reference to it being called "Saltiels". Absolutely nothing else.
I have gone back to 1876 in the local clerk and recorders office. No mention of it being called Saltiels in any document ever. In fact, the first name used other than "Fremont County" or "Arkansas Valley" appears in 1879 in a legal document, calling the place "Cotopaxi."
So why did this building have the name "Saltiel" on it? Just a carryover of the hundreds-year-old tradition from buildings back east?
I wonder!
In the 1880 census, we see that Emanuel and Elizabeth Saltiel were living in their home with their 3 children....and eight boarders. Was this a hotel of sorts??? The beginning of a hotel?
and just for clarification.....it's not listed as "Cotopaxi" in the census dated June 23, 1880. It's still known as Fremont County.
In the 1880 census, Cotopaxi was a very small place. The train was just being built through the canyon and the railroad had built a boarding house (maybe 2?) but did not yet have a depot. There was the first hints of a stagecoach road coming in from the south.....either late 1880 or early 1881....after the train stop was built.
The census verifies this with lists of boarders....and only a very few families:
Richard McCoy, age 43, farmer ("famous father of the McCoy gang" - probably lived east of Cotopaxi in what is now known as McCoy gulch)
Nicholas Owens, age 45, farmer
H. Rogers, age 32, keeping rr boarding house, family and 16 boarders
J. W. Miller, age 30, farmer
W. H. Murray, age 33, keeping rr boarding house, family and 22 boarders
Levi Bradish, age 75, farmer
(and keep in mind that "farmer" is a term for rancher....these men were cattle ranchers....not farmers like you would think of in the midwest).
It appears that Rogers and Murray were brought in to run the boarding houses built by the railroad. The timing is perfect for June as the first train was in December, 1880.
That leaves us with McCoy, Owens, Miller and Bradish as the only ranchers in the valley. Of these, only the McCoy's stayed (from my research thus far).
Once the train stop was built, the town started growing rather rapidly.
In the 1880 Colorado State Business directory it states:
Cotopaxi - New camp on D&RG RR 34 miles west of Canon City,
P Brogan, J C North, Carpenters and Builders (not listed in the 1880 census)
JW Harrison, E H Saltiel, Mine Operators (Harrison resided in Canon City)
Cotopaxi Hotel
M Harrison, Blacksmith (not listed in the 1880 census)
North was living in the same boarding house with Gold Tom in Precinct 1. Cotopaxi was in Enumeration District 46 in the Arkansas River Valley. I think Precinct 1 might have been Texas Creek, but not sure yet. More research to do!
Nonetheless, in 1882, Cotopaxi was new, tiny, and truly part of the wild west. Was Saltiel's house the hotel....and had been a boarding house in 1880?
And then.....I came across this "Saltiel house" photo...and this is probably the original. It has not been cropped. Exact same people in the exact same positions:
Notice the street lamp over to the right? I seriously doubt this photo was taken in 1882. I doubt these were the Jewish colonists in the photo. There was no electricity or gas power in Cotopaxi in 1882.
I think someone found this photo, cropped it, and then declared that the town was once called "Saltiel"!!!
My next task is to take all the buildings that were present in Cotopaxi in 1882 and determine what was a hotel (might have been 2 of them), what was a store (pretty sure there were at least 2) and what other businesses there were in "town" when the Colonists were there.
My point - put your name on your house and one day it might just turn into the name of the place where you lived! OK...just joking! My point is that one should not take literally what they read or see in print. Understand that oral histories can evolve because someone wants you to believe something. Take the time to do the research to prove what someone else writes.
As a final thought on this blog.....do you see the tall cacti in the photo? Cholla cactus, aka "walking
stick" cactus. They cover the hillsides and are everywhere....guess they were here in the 1880s as well! They grow 2' to 4' tall.
You can see the areas covered on the ground with this type of cacti, some call it prickly pear, or elephant ear. I can guarantee you that you don't want to step on it! LOL!
Go back and look at the photos....these is the darker areas on the ground...absolutely covered...and still in the area today, just go take a hike in the hills, but be sure to wear leather shoes or boots and watch where you step! Tennis shoes just won't cut it!
Can you imagine sending a group of Jews to this area to farm? Ask yourself the same question about your own ancestors....what did they face when they attempted to farm, to build a house, to eek out a living as they moved west across this country. What do you know about your ancestors?? It's so much more than just putting a name into a family tree.
Maybe we should all put our names on our homes!
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Friday, February 12, 2016
Never give up!
Yesterday was a great day for me! As a genealogist, I can't say it enough - never give up! Keep going back, doing the same research over and over. Review what you think you know. Check dates. And then start over again!
It is not easy. It is WORK!!! And some days, I do feel like pulling my hair out!!!
In Flora Satt's thesis, she reverenced an article written by Dr. C. Spivak
2. Denver Jewish News, April 6 - April 25, 1925.I didn't always keep great notes. But I had a note from somewhere stating that the article was on Page 38 - 39.
Today this newspaper is known as the Intermountain Jewish News, but the issues cited were in a special Anniversary Edition and included a two-page spread on the Cotopaxi Colony. The April 25th issue contains a feature article on the Colony, newsworthy then as a result of a 'Reminiscence Dinner' given for the surviving members of the group.
I had another note where someone said the article had been torn out of the newspaper and was missing.
That made me give up. I had been to the Denver Public Library, to Denver University's Beck Archives, and to the Colorado History center and looked at their digitized newspapers. I found the Anniversary Edition....it only had 8 pages. I read every single page. Nothing about Cotopaxi. It had to have been a special supplement for the anniversary edition that simply wasn't digitized, or was missing before that time. So I stopped looking.
One day, not too long ago, I decided to spend time searching the online catalog from the Beck Archives at Denver University. When you do a search like this, you need to take the time to open every file, and read the individual contents of the collection. I spent an entire day and didn't begin to get through what they have.
I found this under the topic: Jews Publications 1897 - 1998
Abstract
She had emailed me this note: (department head's name removed) says she never found an article on Cotopaxi by Dr. Spivak.
I was just so pleased that Thyria continued to help me out. And together, we found the article! In this box labeled Jews/Publications. I didn't even have to fight traffic to get to their office - Thyria sent me these scans.
The article by Dr. C. V. Spivak. You should be able to click on the 2 pages and download them so you can read them better. or email me (jlowe54@gmail.com) and I'll send them to you.
Dorothy Robert's article in 1941, p 124, is a near duplicate, but this dates the information to 1925, which is great!! And...there are a couple of new clues that I will begin searching - maybe the next time I need a reason to come to Denver!
Another good lesson learned this week. Librarians are custodians. The take great care of and preserve these documents and records for future generations. It is not up to them to know the contents of what is in their libraries. It is up to us to do the legwork, the research, and to be politely persistent in insisting on what we want to see. As more and more archives become digitized, this will get even easier for future generations of researchers.
In the meantime.....never give up!!!
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Another good lesson learned this week. Librarians are custodians. The take great care of and preserve these documents and records for future generations. It is not up to them to know the contents of what is in their libraries. It is up to us to do the legwork, the research, and to be politely persistent in insisting on what we want to see. As more and more archives become digitized, this will get even easier for future generations of researchers.
In the meantime.....never give up!!!
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
One person's trash.....
I was at the History Center a few weeks ago and they shared with me a story that made my hair stand on end!!! And of course, they wouldn't/couldn't give me any details, so I will repeat this as it was shared with me.
"Someone" filled a dumpster with old documents.
"Someone else" driving down an alley saw the dumpster with the old documents in it. They took it upon themselves to pull everything out of the dumpster and take it to the local history center.
And the good folks there started filing it all away and organizing it.
They were kind enough to allow me to search through boxes of the records that should have been in the incinerator by now!
Low and behold....I found several pertaining to Cotopaxi, but this was the most helpful:
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bill of Sale
Joseph Nudelman to
E. S. Hart
17 Aug 1883
This indenture made on this the thirteenth day of April in the year eighteen hundred and eighty three.
Witnesseth that I the undersigned Joseph Nudelman of Cotopaxi, Fremont County State of Colorado, do for and in in consideration of One Dollar lawful money of the Untied States of America, and other valuable considerations, receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged sell, assign, transfer and set over to Eleazer S. Hart of Cotopaxi, Fremont County, State of Colorado a certain frame house or dwelling situated on ground leased for the purpose, near the track of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway on the Northerly side of said track and distant about five hundred feet Easterly from the present site of the Cotopaxi Hotel, and adjourning the house of Solomon Chuteran in Cotopaxi as herein before described, said dwelling being the same as heretofore occupied by myself and my family as a place of of residence and which was erected for my use and benefit and I hereby declare that I have full right, power and authority to sell and transfer the property herein described and I deliver the same I do herby further sell, transfer and assign to said Eleazer S. Hart the furniture in said dwelling ouse; consisting one kitchen stove with its op..., tenancies and utensils, two beds, one table, six chairs and other miscellaneous articles.
In witness whereof I hereby affix my hand and seal this the day and year first able written.
(signature)
Witness:
Joseph Bardini
State of Colorado
Fremont County
SS
Personally appeared before me the subscriber and acknowledge this as his free act and deed and wishes it seconded as such. Witness my hand and seal this the 30th day of April AD 1883.
Att. Rumel
Justice of the Peace
This assignment has not been accepted and not conveyed
E. S. Hart
Witness H. S. Towling
For value received I hereby assign all my right and title to the property acquired by this instrument, except the goods as mentioned and conveyed to with the household goods, to Mrs. Susan R. McCoy
Witness my hand and seal this the sixteenth day of August AD 1883
E. S. Hart
witness Att Rummel
Personally appeared before me the subscriber and acknowledged this as his free act and deed and wishes it to be recorded as such.
Witness my and and seal this the sixteenth day of August AD 1883
M. Banta
Justice of the Peace
_______________________________________________________________________________
Several things of interest in this single document:
We know that Joseph Nudelman arrived in 1882. In this short time, he had acquired a house, an oven, a table, 6 chairs, and 2 beds.
We now know that this house was next door to the Chuteran residence.
This house was sold to Susan McCoy....who just happened to be the mother of the McCoy Gang of the Cotopaxi area.
E. S. Hart was acting on behalf of Joseph Nudelman, so we can assume that Nudelman had already left the area (history tells us that he went to Painted Woods, North Dakota and I have him in documents there). He most likely left in April, 1883, about 1 year after he arrived.
One of my goals is to establish exactly where the colonists lived. So next, I will go back to the clerk and recorder's office and see what I can find on Susan McCoy transferring this house to the next person. If I can find which house this was, can I find the Chuteran residence?
500 feet east of the Cotopaxi Hotel which I think was the house just east of the store which I think is now owned by Mullins. So much to do!!!
Valuable information that was tossed into a dumpster. How fortunate that "someone" just happened to be driving down an alley and found it. How lucky am I that the staff at the history center let me look through all this!!!
One person's trash.....my treasure!
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
"Someone" filled a dumpster with old documents.
"Someone else" driving down an alley saw the dumpster with the old documents in it. They took it upon themselves to pull everything out of the dumpster and take it to the local history center.
And the good folks there started filing it all away and organizing it.
They were kind enough to allow me to search through boxes of the records that should have been in the incinerator by now!
Low and behold....I found several pertaining to Cotopaxi, but this was the most helpful:
_________________________________________________________________________________
Bill of Sale
Joseph Nudelman to
E. S. Hart
17 Aug 1883
This indenture made on this the thirteenth day of April in the year eighteen hundred and eighty three.
Witnesseth that I the undersigned Joseph Nudelman of Cotopaxi, Fremont County State of Colorado, do for and in in consideration of One Dollar lawful money of the Untied States of America, and other valuable considerations, receipt whereof is hereby acknowledged sell, assign, transfer and set over to Eleazer S. Hart of Cotopaxi, Fremont County, State of Colorado a certain frame house or dwelling situated on ground leased for the purpose, near the track of the Denver and Rio Grande Railway on the Northerly side of said track and distant about five hundred feet Easterly from the present site of the Cotopaxi Hotel, and adjourning the house of Solomon Chuteran in Cotopaxi as herein before described, said dwelling being the same as heretofore occupied by myself and my family as a place of of residence and which was erected for my use and benefit and I hereby declare that I have full right, power and authority to sell and transfer the property herein described and I deliver the same I do herby further sell, transfer and assign to said Eleazer S. Hart the furniture in said dwelling ouse; consisting one kitchen stove with its op..., tenancies and utensils, two beds, one table, six chairs and other miscellaneous articles.
In witness whereof I hereby affix my hand and seal this the day and year first able written.
(signature)
Witness:
Joseph Bardini
State of Colorado
Fremont County
SS
Personally appeared before me the subscriber and acknowledge this as his free act and deed and wishes it seconded as such. Witness my hand and seal this the 30th day of April AD 1883.
Att. Rumel
Justice of the Peace
This assignment has not been accepted and not conveyed
E. S. Hart
Witness H. S. Towling
For value received I hereby assign all my right and title to the property acquired by this instrument, except the goods as mentioned and conveyed to with the household goods, to Mrs. Susan R. McCoy
Witness my hand and seal this the sixteenth day of August AD 1883
E. S. Hart
witness Att Rummel
Personally appeared before me the subscriber and acknowledged this as his free act and deed and wishes it to be recorded as such.
Witness my and and seal this the sixteenth day of August AD 1883
M. Banta
Justice of the Peace
_______________________________________________________________________________
Several things of interest in this single document:
We know that Joseph Nudelman arrived in 1882. In this short time, he had acquired a house, an oven, a table, 6 chairs, and 2 beds.
We now know that this house was next door to the Chuteran residence.
This house was sold to Susan McCoy....who just happened to be the mother of the McCoy Gang of the Cotopaxi area.
E. S. Hart was acting on behalf of Joseph Nudelman, so we can assume that Nudelman had already left the area (history tells us that he went to Painted Woods, North Dakota and I have him in documents there). He most likely left in April, 1883, about 1 year after he arrived.
One of my goals is to establish exactly where the colonists lived. So next, I will go back to the clerk and recorder's office and see what I can find on Susan McCoy transferring this house to the next person. If I can find which house this was, can I find the Chuteran residence?
500 feet east of the Cotopaxi Hotel which I think was the house just east of the store which I think is now owned by Mullins. So much to do!!!
Valuable information that was tossed into a dumpster. How fortunate that "someone" just happened to be driving down an alley and found it. How lucky am I that the staff at the history center let me look through all this!!!
One person's trash.....my treasure!
*****
c2016. All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.
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