A Diamond Cousin? Searching by Address, Steve Morse, and More.

Diamant/Diamond is a very common name.  Most Diamonds (and variants) are not related to me, as many distinct families took the same surname.  But I’m always on the hunt for Diamonds who are related.

Schloma Diment Manifest; June 5, 1911

 

Results from SteveMorse.org's Gold Form

Recently I did a search using Steve Morse’s Gold Form to look at Diamants (and variants) that arrived in Ellis Island, and I sorted the results by town.  One of the results looked intriguing.

Cousin Jack, Leaving Clues--To the Diamonds' Previous Hometown?

I've written about my grandfather's first cousin Jack Landor before.  He lived an extremely colorful life and left a ton of documentation along the way.  (You can read about some of his crazy life at the following links, where he was caught as a stowaway on a ship and applied for citizenship of multiple countries, where he survived a shipwreck, and where he was deported from the United States before becoming an illegal immigrant by deserting his ship.)

Well, the latest documents I discovered about Cousin Jack show the importance of researching relatives of your ancestors rather than just your direct ancestors.  (And this isn't just because Cousin Jack lived such a crazy life.)  Jack's paper trail may have directed me to where my Diamond family lived before Biscupice (now Berezhanka)!

I recently received Jack's service file from his time in the United States Navy.

Cousin Jack's US Navy ID Card, 1944