Today started off with so much promise. After climbing the hills yesterday to arrive at Garnethill Synagogue a day early for our tour. We were much more careful today, and arrived on time. The storyboards wonderfully described the Jewish communities all over Scotland and gave us a great vision of how diverse the community was, scattered in so many cities.

This synagogue is one of only 3 remaining in Glasgow where there had, not many decades ago, been 12. The bookshop had a wonderful selection of books about Scottish Jewish history and I purchased two and a tartan kippah. It was amazing to learn that the Jewish community had its own tartan, although it is no longer available.

After the tour Harvey Kaplan met with me to show me some of the resources available. Although I don’t currently have an active Scottish client project, I used a person in my own collateral family as the subject of research. Juda Isak Landsman went to Glasgow sometime before he sent a letter dated 1948 to my grandparents. The letter was on stationary from the Anglo-American Fountain Pen Company. Beyond that I knew very little. Juda was the brother of Diana Landsman Grass – her husband Samuel was my grandmother’s brother.

With Harvey’s help, I located Juda’s 1942 marriage in Glasgow to Bluma Surgal. His occupation in the marriage record may explain what he was doing in Scotland – it said he was a commercial traveller – was he a salesman for the pen company? We couldn’t find (yet) anything linking him to the pen company beyond the stationary. Long ago I had found Juda’s death record on the Scotlandspeople website. When I logged onto the site, I discovered that in 2010, I had found and saved his death record – I don’t have it in my files so I probably never downloaded it, and 16 years ago, did not make note of his occupation from it – the same occupation as was on his marriage record although I had made not on my tree of all the other pertinent information. Now I have his death record safely saved. The bound un-digitized copies of the Jewish newspaper from 1958, when Juda died, had his death notice. Only his wife and sister Diana are mentioned. Next step – visit the Mitchell Library in Glasgow and look at city directories to see if he or the Anglo-American Fountain Pen Company are mentioned. Since I’ll be in Edinburgh today and perhaps one more day this week, I hope to have time to see if I can find Juda on the 1939 population register.

After we returned to our hotel, I tried looking for Bluma’s family and although I found a record on JewishGen for a man with his name, I have no way of knowing (yet) whether the Chaim Hersh Surgal I found is the same as the person of that name who was Bluma’s father. I don’t yet know where she was from. She appears to have gone to New York in 1949 but I don’t yet know how long she was there before she returned to Scotland in late September.

I thought I found a record for Juda’s paternal grandfather, Leib Hersh Landsmann on JewishGen, but unless there’s an error in his death age, this can’t be the correct person. Abraham Hersh Landsman, Juda’s father, was born in 1868 according to identification papers. By my calculation, his father Leib Hersh must have been born in 1848 or earlier. I found a 1927 death record for a Leib Hersh Landsman who was 70 years old at the time of his death. That meant he was born about 10 years later than the Leib Hersh for whom I’m searching. Best case scenario – Abraham’s birth year was incorrect, or Leib Hersh’s age at death was incorrect. Either fact I will have difficulties establishing. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep looking for other information, of course.

Since we thought an early start to take the train up to Edinburgh was best, I figured we’d just have a restful early evening, but neither was the case. I was in the bathroom changing clothes when a huge crash happened behind me (I really should have taken a photo but I was kind of shaken). Part of the glass shower enclosure fell and shattered all over the floor – I am grateful that although I had glass shards on my clothes and skin, I could shake them off without getting cut. The hotel quickly (within 5 minutes) had someone up to clean the mess, and within another 5 minutes there was a call from the manager saying they were changing our room to an upgraded room and they would be up with a new key. As promised, quicker than I could have imagined, the manager was outside the door with offers to have someone move our stuff, but it was easier to do it ourselves.

As they say, all’s well that ends well.