What we know... what we think we know....

To all family members.... The quest of 2010 is to try to source information about Grandfather Rosenthal from Latvia..   Father of Alex Martin Rosenthal, Sr.  John George Rosenthal,

The information we have is quite scarce.  This is what we think we know.  We think he was born in January, 1885  in a town that was a day's walk from Riga, Latvia.   He went to sea as a young man and at some point in the early 1900's he shipwrecked in the North Atlantic.   Apparently he drifted on a log or timber for a few days before he was picked up by another ship. That ship was headed for Montreal, where he landed and never went back to sea.   There is no immigration record of him arriving in Canada, nor is there a record of birth nor a passport.  We think he spent time in Northern Ontario or Northern Quebec.

We do know he married Marie Fortney in Winnipeg July 23, 1917.  That is the first and only official documentation that we have on him.  The marriage certificate shows his father's name as George Rosenthal and his mother's maiden name as Louise Smelg.

The rest is history...He started raising a family, moved to Northern Ontario, and drowned in 1929.

What some of us think we might know.
1. He had two brothers, George and an unknown name who drowned fishing in the Baltic Sea. We have no documentation to support this.
2. He may have shipwrecked in the Baltic Sea.

The quandry......
There are hand written church records from Latvia, and they have been scanned and posted on the internet at http://www.lvva-raduraksti.lv/en.html   There are thousands of pages to go through, and much of the writing is very hard to read.  Finding the right town and scanning birth records for 1885 is an immense job.  If you occasionally, have a bit of time on your hands, let me know and I will explain to you a rational and organized way to go through the database.

The quest......
My trip this winter is to hopefully try to find some connection back there.   To learn some of the history of the area.. and to get the lay of the land, so to speak....