The Power of Kehila (Community)

A few days ago I got one of my favorite kinds of e-mails. A woman in Israel contacted me because she had discovered the Kehilalink that I had built for Dunilovichi. On the site she had found the tombstone of her great-great grandfather."Who are you?" she asked. "And do you have more on these names"?

Dunilovichi is a shtetl in Belarus that is about 75 miles outside of Vilnius. It is the town from which my grandmother and great-grandparents came. In 2009 I visited it when I was in Vilnius. Upon my return I built a Kehilalink on the town, a website for Jewishgen.org, as my volunteer effort for people who were researching family from there. When I was researching the town prior to my visit I had connected with a woman who had a transcription of the cemetery and photos of the tombstones that enabled me to locate my great-great grandfather’s tombstone. She gave me permission to include the tombstones on the site and to submit them to the Jewish On-line Worldwide Burial Registry.

Building Kehilalinks is a wonderful activity for those of us who have already progressed pretty far in our own research, but aren’t quite ready to relinquish the search. Jewishgen.org offers an on-line class to learn how to construct them which doesn’t require a high level of technical expertise. I’ve found the knowledge quite useful in building out my art website as well.

When I can assist someone in finding their family member, it reminds me of why I do this. I then took her question about whether I had more on her names to heart. I had created several finding aids on the Kehilalink. I have a tab titled Family Names and I went there to see if her name was listed anywhere else. There I have a link that lists out who lived in the town in 1939. There were two entries with her family name. But were they hers? I returned to her family tombstone for more information. There I noted that her great-great grandfather who died in 1918 was named Ben-Zion and his father was Dan. One of the 1939 residents with her family name was also named Dan, quite likely the son of Ben-Zion. Ashkenazic Jews name their children after a deceased grandparent or great-grandparent so it is likely that this person was a family member.

Also on the Family Names tab is an index that I built for the cemetery, immigration records, Yad Vashem and the 1850 census. I had taken each name and identified if it was found in one of those sources and the spelling as there were frequently several variants. From the index I saw that her family name showed up in the immigration tab and a quick search for the record on stevemorse.org informed me that his nearest relative in Europe was his father Dan and he was going to his brother Barnett in Chicago. Hmm, the pieces are beginning to connect. I sent her an e-mail asking if she was familiar with this person and she returned a scan of a scrap of paper with his name that she found in her father’s papers, but indicated she knew nothing more about him.

A few searches on Ancestry.com led me to the 1920 and 1930 census and the naturalization record. As I expected the young man had named his son Benjamin after his son’s great-grandfather who had died just four years earlier. A little good fortune also awaited. It appeared that someone had a family tree on Ancestry which indicated living relatives as well. The woman who contacted me will likely be able to expand her family tree in both directions, discovering a great-great grandfather and the name of her ggg grandfather as well as living relatives in the United States.

 

Finding Your Family's Ancestral Towns -Part II

A few years ago I was doing research for a client in LA.  She had family that came to St. Paul, Minnesota in the 1800s and didn’t know where they came from.  While I was quite envious of the extensive research she could do in the US, I realized that I had an advantage in having my European origins in the more recent past, relatively speaking. Records after 1906 provide much more extensive information and her relatives had been here for several decades by then.  I had traced her family through the census and had searched for immigration records.  Immigration records were difficult to find and there was often no way to confirm that it was the correct record.  Without those critical two points to draw the line between (relatives in Europe, relatives in the US), we had only supposition.   Early naturalization records are also just as sketchy as early immigration records. 

I decided to try a new tack, probate records.  I was able to find an index listing for my client’s great-grandfather for a will in the Minnesota Historical Society Library.  A fabulous place for anyone doing research on Minnesota relatives, this library offers birth and death records, countless newspapers, city directories and more.  A friend was able to find his relative’s personnel file in the records of the railroad.  I took the index number over to Ramsey County Courthouse where I located the Probate Office.  They quickly settled me at a microfilm reader and pulled up the great-grandfather’s will from the 1930s. 

The will offered a wealth of information.  It identified family members, in one case a sister of whom we hadn’t been aware.  It noted causes that he gave to, property he held and lo and behold---the town of birth.  The will noted the town of Good Levey, Poland.  I went to the Town Finder at Jewishgen and input the name.  Up came the town of Garliava, Lithuania.  The Russian and Polish name was Godlevo.

But we had another clue in the sister’s name.  We began to search that new branch and learned that the sister had sons.  We found their immigration records in 1907 which was a challenge as the name had converted from Bartelstein to Burton.  In the record it indicated that they were going to their uncle, my client’s great-grandfather in St. Paul and gave their town of origin.  This was further validated by another source.   As young men her sons had to register for the draft in WWI.  Their draft registration also indicated the town from which they came, a town just 35 miles away from Garliava. 

Emboldened by my success in the St. Paul court records, I explored the Surrogate Court (same as Probate Court)  records in Brooklyn for my own family.  While no one had the wealth to justify a will, I did find guardian papers and records that unveiled other mysteries.  One relative who lived in Brooklyn, but had died at her son’s in Morristown had a document that listed all of her children with their married names.  It was quite simple to go to the court office, check a card file and have them pull up the requested documents. 

There is no magic bullet for discovering the town of origin.  Immigration records post 1906 are the easiest route.  Even if the family came in the 1800s, it is possible that a family member came to them after 1906.  If immigration records are not available you will need to continue to explore other avenues.  Probate records provided an unexpected source for this information. 

I am currently working with another person whose family came over in the 1800s where we are trying to find the ancestral town.  We’ve been successful in working our way back through census records.  We then found burial records on the Jewish On-Line Worldwide Burial Registry.  This program, that I often contribute to when I photograph tombstones in Eastern Europe, also has many photos from the US.  In this case the family cemetery was well documented and provided some information that may prove helpful.  It gave us both her great-grandfather’s Hebrew names and the names of his father.  The great-grandfather’s name in the US was Louis, but his Hebrew name was Nachum Leib.  I have found that these names are often used interchangeably so we can now search using one or the other or both.  With the names of her great-grandfather and his father we can search in European records, but it is still a broad universe within which to search without the town of origin.  The next step would be to find death records for the great-grandfather.  Death record information is as good as the knowledge of the person providing it. As his wife was still alive upon his death, she would be familiar with the town he came from.  If we are lucky it will give us something more than the ubiquitous “Russia”.