Finding My British Family - Take 2

Today I received another thread in my continuing search for my relatives in the United Kingdom.  As you may recall (see entry: Finding My British Family 11/28/2009) I have been following the history of Louis Kodish and Annie Singer.  Louis Kodish was born in London around 1900, immigrated to the US in 1929 with his wife Katherine and returned to Glasgow in 1934.  He came to his cousin Abraham Singer who was also my grandmother’s cousin and returned with his wife Katherine to his father Marks Kodish in Glasgow.  This much I had learned from immigration records to and from the US.   

As his relationship was to my relatives from Dunilovichi, I am operating under the assumption that his father was also from Dunilovichi and have hopes of linking yet another family to mine.  I know that there were Hedeshes from Dunilovichi in the Dunilovichi cemetery and names spelled Khodis or Khodos in the 1834 and 1850 Revision Lists for the town.  No linkages yet, but I remain hopeful that a puzzle piece will click into sharper focus.

In February of this year I sent for the visa records of both Louis and Annie from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  Two months later I received Annie’s record and today, six months later I received the record for Louis. This is relatively fast compared to the year or more it used to take before they started charging for their services.

The file for Louis was interesting, but didn’t provide anything new for me to pursue.  Included in the visa file was a photo that was clearly the same person who sent a photo to one of my father’s cousins signed “your cousin, Louis Kodish”.  The application provides his address and that of his father.  His mother was deceased by 1929 when he was submitting this record.  His father’s name was given as Marks.  Most of this I already knew from immigration records. The one new piece of data came from a copy of his birth certificate which gave his mother’s name as Kate Epstein.  The last name of Kodish was spelled Cordis. Back to the cemetery where I found no Epsteins.  Quite possibly his mother was not from Dunilovichi..

Annie’s file also showed a photograph of a young woman in her 20s. She was born in London in 1907 and lived in Jerusalem from 1923 to 1928 when the visa was issued.  I did the math and found that she went there at age 16.  Her mother Sarah was indicated as deceased and her father Meyer was no longer in London, but back in Diniavolitshe, Poland, presumably Dunilovichi.   Perhaps he returned after his wife’s death and his daughter decided to venture into Palestine rather than return home with dad.  Now in 1929, tiny Annie, at 5’1 ½ “ was leaving Palestine to go to Brooklyn to stay with her uncle Abraham Singer, my grandmother’s cousin. I am struck with the sheer adventurousness of her journey.

Her birth record indicated that her mother Sarah Singer was also formerly a Singer.  Communities were small and marriages to cousins were common.  In addition to the birth record there was a certificate showing that she was free of trachoma and a Certificate of Character from the Department of Police and Prisons.

So from the visa files, I now have a little piece of additional information for both Louis and Annie on their mother’s names.  I can continue to search for Louis and his father Marks in Glasgow.  Annie’s trail in London seems to have grown cold with her departure and her father’s return to Dunilovichi.  I may see if I can find a record of her original immigration to Palestine and some further trace of her father in Dunilovichi.  She appears to have vanished in America, no doubt marrying and changing her name, the curse of genealogists.

And while on the subject of my Dunilovichi relatives, I did have one ah-ha moment recently concerning the timing of my great-grandfather’s immigration.  I knew that my great-grandfather came to the US in 1904.  What else happened in that year?  It dawned on me that my great-great grandfather died in 1904 in Dunilovichi, a fact I learned upon my visit.   No doubt there was  a relationship between those dates. To test that theory I checked the month in which my great-great grandfather died against the month in which my great-grandfather immigrated.  Sure enough, my great-grandfather waited until his father’s death to immigrate leaving just a month or two after his death.  Somehow that is a humanizing detail.  Now I picture a son waiting for his father to die before he felt free to leave, perhaps waiting out an illness to be at his father’s deathbed. It is in these dribbles and drabs of information that we begin to piece together a story, a narrative about our ancestors’ lives that reminds us that they really lived with all the human emotions and drama that can accompany our own journey.

Finding My British Family

I am often as fascinated with the process of solving a puzzle as the resolution itself. I love the way it evolves over time and the way each new piece of information moves me along a path of discovery.

For many years I have been exploring a link to British relatives. A cousin of my father’s spoke of family by the name of Kodish and recalled receiving boxing gloves from them for a holiday gift. My parents went to England many years ago and copied down the Kodish names from the phonebook. Not quite sure what to do with the list, they held onto it until I started my genealogy research years later.

A few years ago my father’s cousin died. Without children or a spouse, there was no one to take responsibility for his photos so I was “bequeathed” them in my role as family historian. I went through them with my mother and identified many. Others remain a mystery, fodder for future artworks as they are interesting photos even if unknown subjects. One photo stood out however, for on the back of it was signed, “Your cousin, Louis Kodish”.





I still wasn’t sure if the Kodish family was related to my side of the family, but decided to see what I could find. Over time I stumbled across an immigration record for Louis Kodish and his wife Katherine. They immigrated in 1929 to Louis’s cousin Abraham Singer in New York. Through my research in Dunilovichi, Belarus, I now knew that Abraham Singer was related to me. In genealogy speak he is a first cousin twice removed which means my grandparents were cousins to him and I’m two generations removed.


My father recalled his cousin saying something about Louis working on a ship and in fact he immigrated before Katherine and worked as a waiter on the ship. He was born in London, but lived in Glasgow prior to immigrating. His father’s name was given as Marks Kodish, along with his address in Glasgow. One other detail that may prove helpful; Louis had a visa issued in Glasgow, for which I can try to find the file from the US Citizen and Immigration Services. I had previously gotten a copy of the visa file for my great-grandmother and it was quite extensive including a birth record with parents’ names. My longer-term objective is to tie Louis back to Dunilovichi through his parents’ records so this may help me do so.

Katherine followed Louis to his cousin’s address in Brooklyn. By 1930 they had made their way to Chicago where I found them in the US Census. Louis' parents were noted as being from Russia although he was born in England. Here he worked as an insurance salesman, but I would guess that the Depression didn’t treat them kindly as they returned to Glasgow in 1934.

On a recent visit to the Family History Library I was able to access the 1911 British Census which was newly released. The library offers access to many pay databases for free so I made use of findmypast.com. Here I found a Marks and Chai Kaddish from Russia who would have been born around 1866, but no son listed named Louis. A few Kodishes were listed as being from Vilna which sounded promising as my grandmother referred to being from Vilna even though she was actually from the nearby shtetl of Dunilovichi. The larger area was known as Vilna so these families likely came from the same region. Unfortunately there was no tidy solution to my puzzle. My hoped for discovery of a listing for a son named Louis and a father named Marks from Vilna didn’t prove out….yet.

I decided to check one more avenue called the B-M-D index. This references birth, marriage and death records by each quarter of a year. Here I enlarged my search to include another mystery traveler from England. Annie Singer, niece to Abraham Singer, came over from London via Palestine in early 1929 to stay with him. I was never quite sure what happened to her after immigration, possibly she married and without her new name I lost the trail, the perennial difficulty in tracing women. In looking at birth records, I found one Lewis Kodish in 1903 and several Annie Singers in the expected timeframe. For a small cost I can order the birth records from which I will likely identify the parents’ names.

While I was in the B-M-D Index, I decided to take a look at the Kodishes who might have immigrated from Russia. As I wanted to locate an earlier generation, I pulled up the death records for each year from 1904 to 2005. From these records, I also have the birth date and in some cases the mother’s name. Just as with my Radom database, I don’t know what they tell me yet, but as I get more information they may click into sharper focus.

So what was my process? It began with oral histories which revealed the existence of a Louis Kodish as well as his experience working on a ship. It further solidified with a photo. Immigration records for both Louis and Annie tied them to relatives of mine who originated in Dunilovichi and gave me an estimated birth date. It then lead me to my next step of ordering visa records which should tie to their parents and hopefully back to Dunilovichi. Along the way I had some dead ends and collected information which may prove meaningful as I learn more. I also had to wait several years before I could seek the visa for Annie Singer. The Office of US Citizen and Immigration Services will only release records if the person's birth date is over 100 years ago. An appreciation for the process is what keeps me on the trail.

A Discovery

Genealogy research is often painstaking and insights may arise over many years as more information becomes available. Often the answers lie in information we’ve already collected, but didn’t have the context to make sense of earlier. I’ve not departed for my trip yet, but information I’ve gleaned in my preparations has already unlocked some long standing puzzles. 

My story begins with a photo of the tombstone of my great-grandfather who is buried in New York. Jewish tombstones indicate both the name of the deceased as well as his or her father. I’ve gotten several different interpretations of his father’s name on the tombstone. While the second name is clearly Mordechai the first name appears to be Peish or Feish. My great-grandfather’s death certificate offered no guidance only noting his father’s name was “Max”, presumably an Americanized version of Mordechai provided by his grandson for a grandfather he never met. At this point I had only my great-grandfather’s tombstone and death certificate and thought I had hit a dead end. 

When I began to prepare for my trip I posted a question on the Jewishgen Belarus Special Interest Group e-mail. Had anyone been to Dunilovichi or Glebokie? If so could they offer me any guidance? I heard from a number of people who had traveled there or in nearby regions. Some offered additional names that they were researching as well as travel tips. One of the most valuable contacts was with a woman who had traveled to Dunilovichi. When she returned she organized a fund raising campaign and arranged for the Jewish cemetery to be cleaned up and for the stones to be documented. That effort resulted in a list of the tombstones which were translated to the extent possible. I noted that of the 369 tombstones only two thirds were legible. The earliest burial was in 1761 and the last was in 1950. Presumably someone returned after the war and with his death the Jewish community of Dunilovichi ceased to exist, yet another story to explore. The first surname didn’t appear until 1887 and then a long period ensued until 1901 when surnames began to appear with some frequency. 

 In reviewing the spreadsheet, I first looked at surnames that might resemble my family name of Raichel. There were two Rayhels, possibly relatives, who had died in 1919 and 1936. I then decided to ignore the surnames and evaluate them for anything which might resemble Peish or Feish Mordechai. One name jumped out – Pesach Mordechay was the father of Eska Zinger who had died in 1938. Hmm, could this be my great-great grandfather? The name wasn’t Rayhel or Raichel, but something gave me pause. I knew of Singers from Dunilovichi. My parents had told me there was some sort of relationship to an Abraham and Sadie Singer, but were never sure to which one we were related. Some years back I had tracked down the grandson of the Singers who had been contemporaries of my grandparents. Could this be the linkage between our families? 

I did a search on the name Eska which confirmed that it was a female name. I now had a working hypothesis that Eska was born a Rayhel and married a Singer. My great-grandfather Schloime had died in 1932 so would have been a contemporary of Eska. Perhaps she was a sister. I then looked to see if there was a record of the death of Pesach Mordechay and found one in 1904 without a surname. It gave his father’s name as Moshe. So if my hypothesis proves correct I’ve identified my great-great grandfather (Pesach Mordechai), my great-great-great grandfather (Moshe), a sibling to my great-grandfather (Eska) as well as the linkage between the Singers and the Raichels.

I went back to my earlier research on the Singers who immigrated. Perhaps there was a clue that I missed in my research that might make sense in light of this new information. I had discovered the immigration record of Itze Singer from Dunilovichi. In faded writing by his name was recorded the name “Abraham”. He gave his father’s name as Benes Singer and immigrated in 1913 to his cousin Abraham Schwartz at 613 Rockaway. Suddenly I had an “Aha” moment. The name Schwartz hadn’t meant anything to me at the time as I assumed it was a relative from Dunilovichi whom I hadn’t yet encountered. But the address seemed familiar. I went back to my immigration database and confirmed that was the same address given for my great-grandfather when his son immigrated in 1911. Suddenly Abraham Schwartz clicked into focus. My great-grandfather’s oldest daughter had married an Abraham Schwartz. By marriage he would be a cousin to Abraham Singer even though he had never met him at this point in time. This was 1913 when a woman traveling alone was held as a “likely public charge” until a man vouched for her. Offering the name of a male cousin by marriage would have taken precedence over a female blood cousin if one wanted to enter the country smoothly. 

I also had an immigration record for a Schie Singer from Dunilovichi whose father was given as Pines Singer going to his uncle, Schloime Raichel, my great-grandfather. I never was able to trace him successfully after his immigration as I was unsure what the name Schie became once Americanized. I also found that Singer was about as challenging as Weinberg. There are a lot of them. But now I wondered if Benes, the father of Abraham Singer, was the same person as Pines, the father of Schie. I could imagine the names sounded very similar to the person recording the immigration information. The family tree was sprouting mental leaves linking the Dunilovichi graveyard to my New York immigrant relatives. If my great-grandfather was Abraham Singer’s uncle, then perhaps Eska Zinger was his mother, Benes (Pines) his father and Schie his brother. And one more trip back to the Dunilovichi cemetery to tie it all together. There was one more record of a Zinger. Drum roll !!!! Benjamin –Binush Zinger who died in 1934, son of Nachum. 

A little research confirms that Benes is the shortened version of Benjamin. And working my way backwards I do a search for tombstones for a Nachum and discover his death in 1921. How do I know this is the correct Nachum? It was the only Nachum in that time period and his father is listed as Benjamin. Among Ashkenazic Jews, children are frequently named for a grandparent who is deceased at the time of their birth. 

So what does it all look like when I put it together? The graveyard data is framed in bold lines and the other names are those who immigrated to the US. This is a very abridged version that just deals with the names I've mentioned. All conjecture at this stage, but a very strong working hypothesis woven out of naming patterns, immigration records and tombstones in a Belarus cemetery. While in Vilnius I will be reviewing the revision (censuses) lists in the archives. Hopefully I’ll find something that will confirm or disprove my theory. For now I’m very optimistic that I’m heading down the right road.