BEGATS AND BEQUEATHALS

Or, Subtitled: “May her soul rest in peis.”

This posting tells a story. It tells a story about a story, one told to me in my formative years. It also tells a story about how sudden genealogical surprises can either confirm or disprove our long-cherished family traditions. So that we do well to keep ourselves always open to the new surprises that inevitably come along the road as we do genealogical research….

This posting is about one such surprise. It’s also about how, while family stories can conceal truth and mislead us, they also sometimes contain important information that we do well to pay attention to, after we’ve done sound research to document or disprove what family traditions tell us.