Robert R. Fenichel

 

Family Matters

I have for several years maintained a database to keep track of who is who in our old photographs, many of them showing remote members of my family or that of my first wife, Emily S. Fenichel.  In September 2005, I heard for the first time from Ronald James Rosenthal, who turns out to be my second cousin once removed.  He had been zealously collecting a genealogy of our family, and he called to obtain a little information and, graciously, to provide a great deal more.

Around the same time, Emily and I came upon a genealogical chart that Julian Berman, her former husband's second cousin, had prepared around 1978, covering scores of persons over six generations.  It seemed like a good time to merge these data into one database.  Shortly after Emily's death, I came upon another genealogical chart, probably prepared around 2000 by Emily's cousin Ron Killian.  From time to time, some additional lore has been provided by Ruth Fenichel Kornbluth, whose relation to me is uncertain.  

In 2011, I heard from another second cousin once removed, Tom Coorsh.  He is the great-grandson of my grandaunt Taube; he has a lot of information regarding Taube's descendants, but he prefers that I not display information about living members of that line.  I have elected not to display any of the Taube-descendant data, so interested persons should contact Coorsh directly.

More recently (December 2013), I have heard from yet another second cousin once removed, Scott Abrams.  Some of the information that he provided can be seen on my page devoted to Isaac Kasofsky and his descendants.  After my marriage to Judy Bickart, I added information about her family (Ashmans & Greenbergs).

The database itself now includes a variety of anecdotes, competing date estimates, and so forth, but what will be maintained on-line are only a few non-annotated charts of ancestors and descendants.   I am happy to accept related data with which to expand/amend the database, but I will not myself be digging (as the cousins have) into old census records, passenger-ship manifests, and so on.

Some known Fenichels, uncertainly related to me, do not appear here.

No single chart contains all of the kinship data available in my current database.  Each chart extends only to the ancestors or descendants of a single person, with spouses and siblings included non-recursively.  For example, no single chart includes both my sister's sons and any of my sisters-in-law's daughters.   Some of the data (e.g., most of the data obtained from the Berman charts) will not be represented here, but I'd be happy to exchange the data with interested people, and/or to install links to charts that they may choose to maintain on their own pages.

I've never met Bernie Sanders, but he is linked to me because he was briefly married to my sister-in-law, Deborah Messing.  Following the long-dissolved link, journalists have arrived on Deborah's doorstep from the far corners of the Earth.  Following the even-more-attenuated link to me, this site experienced a sharp increase in activity after August 2015.  Various pictures of Emily were zealously downloaded, perhaps in the hope that an image of Deborah (or even Bernie!) might be present in the background.  Each of these pictures of Emily was being downloaded about 100 times a day. 

The charts now available are

 There are hyperlinks between them, and, as noted above, these charts may come to include links to interlocking charts that others may choose to maintain elsewhere.

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Page revised: 10/30/2022 13:19