Be Thorough

When you have a hard-to-obtain source at your disposal, make sure you check it for everything that could possibly be there, not just the things that you expect to see there, or the things you are looking for.  I recently got a big reward from being thorough: I had obtained the Budapest Jewish marriage registry from the LDS church to get information about Adolf Magaziner (and it successfully connected him to the family tree).  But before I sent the film back to Utah, I decided to skim the entire film, brides and grooms, to see if there was anyone else named Magaziner (or any other familiar names).  And oh, my, what a find...

There was only one other person named Magaziner in the registry, but he was somebody I was already trying to connect: Dr. Jozsef Magaziner, who was born in Homonna around 1833.  I assumed he was related because of the name and the town, but that was all I had.  The marriage registry confirmed that Jozsef was from Homonna and identified Jozsef's father as Samuel, definitively linking him to the tree.  Interestingly, the ages that Jozsef and Adolf gave in their marriage registries corresponded: Jozsef was 36 in 1859; Adolf was 32 in 1865.  Could they be twins?  They also both died in the same year (I don't yet have Jozsef's date of death).

But wait, there's more: Adolf's wife was Johanna Neufeld; Jozsef's wife was Antonia Neufeld.  The marriage records indicated that both Johanna and Antonia had a father named Leopold.  Now, Neufeld was a much more common name in Hungary than Magaziner, but I'm sure these two wives were sisters.  So the record I wasn't even looking for told me that Adolf and Jozsef were brothers, possibly twins, who married sisters.  I'm glad I didn't send that film back without checking!