Monday 2 October 2017

Something in the air

There must be something in the air ...
There I was, whiling away the time on the top deck of the Number 7 bus, scrolling through the emails on my phone. There was one from MyHeritage, so I opened it to see what news there was on the family history front. It was a list of 'record matches' they'd found for people in the Family Tree I've got on their site. One of them was for the family of Joseph Szapira of Brighton. In the 1891 Census they were living at 3 St James's Street.As I read this, the bus pulled up at a stop, and I glanced out of the window., as you do.
There it was, just behind me - Number 3, the yellow building currently offering organic Belgian chips. In 1891 it was a fruiterer's. Joseph Szapira, formerly a jeweller, seems to have taken over the business after the death of his father-in-law Samuel Joel. Apart from the shop-fronts, the row of buildings, with their bow-windows on the first floor, are more or less as they were in 1891.So was this email from MyHeritage primed to open at just this time, and just this place? Are they in cahoots with the bus driver?
Or is it maybe Kate Joel's way of reminding me that I haven't yet managed to link her family with that of Jacob Joel, who lived at 89 St James's Street? Or is it even Isaac Frankenstein nudging me again, from across the Atlantic - I haven't managed to link him to anyone at all.
Or .... ?

2 comments:

  1. Your next stage is to update your My Heritage tree with the siblings etc. as they appear in the census. Maybe this will bring more Smart Matches?

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    Replies
    1. True - however in this case my main interest is in trying to track down Kate Joel's father Samuel, rather than her descendants. But you're right - sometimes going sideways can help take you forwards!

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