This week's prompt was "What is the neatest thing you've found while exploring your family's history? What makes you smile even now thinking about it?"
I don't know if I have any one favorite discovery, however I do have a few that would be towards the top of any list.
One of them being of my most recent finds which was the death record of who I presume to be my 3rd great grandfather, Dawid Tillinger.
This record came to my attention when Gesher Galicia released scans from their Przemysl Fond 154 identification project. The timing of this project along the deep dive am doing into my Tillinger ancestors couldn't have been better. The ancestry and collateral lines of my 2nd great grandfather Aron Moshe Tillinger has always (and probably always will be) one of my thickest brick walls. I have a picture of Aron's headstone thanks to my grandfather's cousin. It lists his father as being named Dawid. I had already assumed this to be the case sine Aron's first grandchild was named David. I have the date of Aron and his wife Hanna's civil marriage, however that year appears to have been lost or destroyed. According to the above record, Dawid died on April 17, 1904 at 69 years old, son of Judah Leib and Chaje Rozje. It also says something about his unnamed wife, which throws a wrench into some of my theories. David, Aron's first grandchild, was born on October 3, 1906. Which fits with Jewish naming customs. This also helps lend credence my theory of who Aron's ancestors may be since he had a son named Juda (Julius in the US) and there are other Juda's who were born to other Tillingers, as well as other Chaje Roza's (my branch did not have one).
I will probably go more into my Tillinger research in a future blog post.