Grandpa’s Birthday Mystery

My paternal grandfather, Harry Schwartz, was born in New York City. Our family celebrated his birthday on July 25. In 1978, we had a big party celebrating a couple of graduations, my father’s 50^th birthday, and my grandfather’s 80^th birthday. This meant Harry was born on July 25, 1898.

As I began my genealogy research awhile ago, I looked through my deceased father’s papers and uncovered this “Certification of Birth” for “Haris Swartz” stating he was born on August 1, 1897.

This obviously caused much confusion and generated many questions. Was this really my grandfather’s birth record? Maybe the information wasn’t copied correctly from his birth certificate? I could understand that his given name may have been Haris and that his surname was misspelled. But that birth date was the real shocker. It just didn’t make any sense.

I dug further and found his actual birth certificate which does look like the correct birth certificate for my grandfather, according to the parents’ names and the home address. The name Haris is interesting in that it never again appeared on any of his official or unofficial records. And his surname was never again recorded as Swartz – always as Schwartz [I’ve located birth certificates for 6 of Harry’s siblings and 2 of those also show the surname spelled as “Swartz” (others are “Schwartz”)]. Still, these discrepancies are not that surprising. But that birthdate ….

I did some more digging and found Harry’s birthdate listed as July 25, 1897 on his 1918 World War I draft card as well as his father’s (Joseph Schwartz) 1913 petition for naturalization. An even earlier record was the 1900 U.S. census which listed the residents’ month and year of birth. Harry’s was listed as July 1897. However, his 1942 World War II draft card listed his birth date as August 1, 1897. So confusing!

Well, all of the records have one thing in common – the birth year is consistently 1897. And that year makes more sense than 1898, because his brother David Schwartz was born in December 1898! 

One place I did see Harry’s birthday listed as July 25, 1898 was his grave stone. Of course, that information was provided by Harry’s son (my father) Sidney Schwartz, so although it indicates when we all observed his birthday, it’s not really evidence of Harry’s actual birth date. 

During a conversation with Dad in 2006, he said his dad (Harry) thought his birthday was really in August and that his birth certificate may be wrong. Well, it’s looking like both he and his birth certificate were correct and for some reason at some point he started commemorating July 25, 1898 as his date of birth. It was actually his father who gave the July 25 date at least as early as 1913, but I can’t find any explanation for 1898 in place of 1897. I guess that will always remain a mystery.