I'm looking for information about Talna/Talnoye, etc., for a
talk that I'll be giving to my local Jewish Community in October.
The sort of thing I want is, for the second half of the 19th
century, the size of the general population, the size of the
Jewish population, the number of synagogues, number and level
of schools (Jewish and otherwise), numbers of yeshivot (I'm aware
of the one yeshiva established by the Twerskys), the proportion
of Jews who attended the yeshivot, nature of the local economy,
occupations followed by Jews, level of general culture-i.e. was
there a theatre, an opera house, museum?, whether the town was a
"hotbed" for any particular philosophy or political school, eg.
Yiddish Communism or any other.

I've done a search on google, and the famous name that comes up
most frequently is Mischa Elman. Aside >from him and the members
of the Twersky family, were there any other well-known residents or
descendants of residents? I have also had a look at most of the
databases and sources available on JewishGen, and aside >from Ted
Margulis' monumental genealogy site, there isn't much in the way
of concrete information.

Can anyone point me to fairly easily accessible references, or
even give me some of the above information directly? I live about
two hours away >from the nearest Jewish library, so my access to
magazines and books is limited. Inter-library loan is always
possible, I know, but on Jewish references my library can be very
obtuse. (Apologies to anyone who works for the public library system.)

I'd be very grateful for any help.

Sincerely,
Roberta Sheps
Colchester, England (born in Winnipeg, Canada)

Searching:
COHEN, KLAIMON and GROSSMAN, Talna (Ukraine); BELOVITSKY(I),
BELOV/BELOFF/BELL: (Popishok/Popiskes), Lithuania/ Montreal; YAFFE:
Wiliez, nr Vilna/ Winnipeg/ Montreal/ North Dakotah; SHEPS, KRASNOW
and POTASHNIKOW: Odessa area