Birth Name: Jerome David Salinger
Date of Birth: January 1, 1919
Place of Birth: New York City, New York
Date of Death: January 27, 2010
Place of Death: Cornish, New Hampshire
Ethnicity:
*Ashkenazi Jewish (father)
*English, Irish, German (mother; who may have converted to Judaism)
J. D. Salinger was an American author. He was famous for writing The Catcher in the Rye (1951). His son, Matt Salinger, is an actor who played Captain America in the 1990 film.
J. D.’s father, Sol Salinger, was born to a Lithuanian Jewish family. J. D.’s mother, Marie (Jillich), had English, Irish, and German ancestry. After marrying J. D.’s father, J. D.’s mother considered herself Jewish and was renamed Miriam. It is not clear if J. D.’s mother formally converted to Judaism. J. D. was raised Jewish and had a Bar Mitzvah ceremony.
J. D.’s paternal grandparents were Simon F. Salinger (the son of Hyman Joseph Salinger and Dora Shereshevsky) and Fannie Copland (the daughter of Morris Kaplan and Ida). Simon was born in Taurogen, Lithuania, and was a rabbi for the Adath Jeshurun congregation, in Louisville, Kentucky. Fannie was born in Berrincki, Lithuania.
J. D.’s maternal grandparents were George Lester Jillich, Jr. (the son of George Lester Jillich, Sr. and Mary Jane Bennett) and Nellie F. McMahon.
Sources: Genealogies of J. D. Salinger – http://www.geni.com
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.ancestry.com