Sorting Saturday: Leonard Broida and Anita (Meyer) Broida

image_pdfimage_print
Leonard Broida's Carnegie Alumni News update for September, 1964, in the Alumni News, page 7.
Leonard Broida’s Carnegie Alumni News update for September, 1964, in the Alumni News, page 7.

Broida Family (Click for Family Tree)

Newspapers are such a wonderful way to learn more about family and the everyday- and special!- activities of their life. Don’t forget to look for a variety of spellings when looking at newspapers, because:

1) Spellings of names were a bit looser in earlier times; and

2) Newspapers use OCR (optical character recognition) software to try to find the words on the page. As newspaper ages and is folded and exposed to light, parts of the letters may fade or be lost and thus be read as a slightly different letter. Hyphenation may also decease your expected ‘hits’ in an OCR search. As an example, a search on “Broida” may not pick up the name if it is hyphenated and a syllable sent to another line, as in

Broi-

da.

Leonard Broida has been harder to find in the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project than anticipated. This may be because sometimes he is listed as “Broido” instead of Broida. There are clues it is the right person, though, as when his wife or other family names are mentioned. But there is also a Broido family living in Pittsburgh during these years. There is a Leonard in that family too, but he is often noted as “J. Leonard Broido.” Not always though, so use the address too as  a clue to help differentiate Leonards.

Max Feldman Obituary, 20 May 1932 Jewish criterion, Vol. 80, No. 2, Page 21, courtesy of Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project.
Obituary of Max Feldman, Leonard L. Broida’s step-father.  20 May 1932 Jewish Criterion, Vol. 80, No. 2, Page 21, courtesy of Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project.

Some search engines, like that of the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project, require that one enclose words in a phrase in quotes in order to not get thousands of hits with just one of the words. Remember to try different combinations of a name- going from “Leonard Broida” to “Leonard L. Broida” provided more and different results.

A search for Leonard’s wife Anita using her maiden name picked up a number of additional articles. Don’t forget to try a woman’s name with “Mrs.” in front of it, using her own first name (“Mrs. Anita Broida”) and then again with just the surname (“Mrs. Broida”). “Mrs. Leonard L. Broida” should get picked up also when you search under his name so no need for a separate search. You might even try “Leonard L. and Anita Broida”- making a list of possible search terms and spellings can be quite helpful.

We did leave a few articles for you, dear reader, to find in the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project, but here is one last tidbit related to Leonard and Anita (Meyer) Broida:

Obituary of Sydney Feldman, half-brother of Leonard L. Broida.Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, 15 february 1990, Vol. 29, No. 1, Page 5. Courtesy of Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project.
Obituary of Sydney Feldman, half-brother of Leonard L. Broida. Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, 15 february 1990, Vol. 29, No. 1, Page 5. Courtesy of Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project.

 

Notes, Sources, and References: 

  1. Citations per captions. With special thanks to the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project for their generous permission to post articles from their digital collection. https://digitalcollections.library.cmu.edu/portal/collections/pjn/index.jsp

 

Please contact us if you would like higher resolution images. Click to enlarge images.

We would love to read your thoughts and comments about this post (see form below), and thank you for your time! All comments are moderated, however, due to the high intelligence and persistence of spammers/hackers who really should be putting their smarts to use for the public good instead of spamming our little blog.
 

Original content copyright 2013-2016 by Heritage Ramblings Blog and pmm.

Family history is meant to be shared, but the original content of this site may NOT be used for any commercial purposes unless explicit written permission is received from both the blog owner and author. Blogs or websites with ads and/or any income-generating components are included under “commercial purposes,” as are the large genealogy database websites. Sites that republish original HeritageRamblings.net content as their own are in violation of copyright as well, and use of full content is not permitted.
 
Descendants and researchers MAY download images and posts to share with their families, and use the information on their family trees or in family history books with a small number of reprints. Please make sure to credit and cite the information properly.
 
Please contact us if you have any questions about copyright of our blog material.

2 thoughts on “Sorting Saturday: Leonard Broida and Anita (Meyer) Broida”

  1. Wow- so glad that you found the blog, Jeff! It is always nice to hear kind words, and especially that our words helped you learn more about family.

    If you know any of your Leonard & Anita Broida cousins, we are looking for a good home for Leonard’s artwork described at http://heritageramblings.net/2016/04/04/mystery-monday-leonard-broida-artwork/

    Leonard did an unbelievable job researching and documenting the Broida family tree- we are all deeply indebted to him. We are grateful to his family too- he probably missed a few dinners or was distracted during them while sorting through the complex web of Broidas in the US to create the official tree.

    If you have any Broida photos or treasures, we would love to share them through the blog. We do plan to post more Broida information in the future too.

    Thank you again for taking the time to leave a comment- it is much appreciated!

  2. This blog is wonderful. Anita Meyer Broida is my greta aunt. Her brother Jeff Meyer (born Isador Meyer) was my wonderful grandfather. Your blog has connected a variety of dots for me. Until recently, I knew nothing of Anita or her brothers Bernard and Morton — or of Leonard Broida. Thanks for these posts!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Exercise your brain- prove you\'re not a spammer/bot! * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.