Several years ago I cataloged the Slabodka (Vilijampole) landsmanshaftn
plots located in 3 Jewish cemeteries in Queens, NY and submitted the data
totalling about 475 burials to the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial
Registry (JOWBR).2

In the past week I have looked up the death certificates of everyone in
these plots who died in New York City prior to 1949 and in New Jersey prior
to 1941 (death certificates after 1948 in NYC and after 1940 in NJ are not
publicly available on microfilm). When it was noted on the death
certificate, I have now added the names of the deceased's parents to my
JOWBR templates. The revised data will be submitted to the JOWBR by the
end of the month.

An index of Slabodker deceased (arranged alphabetically by first name and
given name) and the names of their parents that I gleaned >from the death
certificates can be found
at <http://home.att.net/~kovno/slabodkerburials.htm>. Additional
information about the deceased, including date of death, age, name of
spouse, Hebrew name, and location of cemetery can be found in the JOWBR at
<http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/cemetery/>.

On a grander scale, I have cataloged the burials in the 19 Kovno (Kaunas)
landsmanshaftn plots in the New York City metropolitan area totalling 5480
burials and in the past 6 weeks have looked up the New York City and New
Jersey death certificates for approximately 1/3 of the burials and for the
same years as the Slabodka plots. The Kovno burial society data will be
submitted to the JOWBR for the first time by the end of this month
(although it won't be available online until the next time the JOWBR is
updated).

In the interim an index of the Kovner deceased and the names of their
parents gleaned >from the death certificates can be found at
<http://home.att.net/~kovno/kovnerburials.htm>. For those of us still not
on high-speed internet access, this file may take a minute or two to appear
because of its large size.

The entries without the blue background are buried in Kovno landsmanshaftn
plots that specifically have the word "Kovner" or "Kovna" in the society's
name. That does not mean though that everyone in these plots came >from or
had roots in Kaunas or even Lithuania in general.

The entries with the blue background are buried in the Adler's Young Men
Association, which is a society primarily for immigrants >from Kovno
according to "Zikhroynes fun a shrifzetser", a memoir in Yiddish by Samuel
Schoenfeld, published by YIVO in 1946, which talks about this society
around page 50.

I can vouch for two of my ancestors buried the Adler's Young Men
Association: Mayer S. LANGMAN was born in Kaunas according to his actual
Lithuanian birth record and his brother, Jacob, was married in
Kaunas. However, >from the "truth in advertising department" a good number
of the people in the Adler's Young Men Association, perhaps a majority,
were >from places outside of Lithuania according to their death certificate
-- Austria, Poland, Roumania, Hungary, etc. The reason I indicated these
names in blue is so that I don't give a false impression that these people
were definitely >from Lithuania in general or Kovno in particular when they
weren't necessarily.

Regardless of whether or not the deceased was of Litvak origin, if you have
any corrections to or additional information for either the Slabodka or
Kovno landsmanshaftn burial data, including the Adler's Young Men Assn.,
please let me know privately and I will edit my JOWBR templates before I
submit them to the JOWBR.

The primary purpose in my posting this message though is in the hope that
you will recognize your Vilijampole and/or Kaunas ancestors and relatives,
want to learn more about them and their ancestors through Lithuanian
archival records, and join the LitvakSIG Kaunas district research
group. For further information about this, please contact me privately.

Ada Green
LitvakSIG Kaunas district research group co-ordinator
adagreen@...