Dear Sally,

That is a lot of very useful information and I agree that this is an
area that has not recently been part of the conversation, though it has
in the past. Thank you so much for sharing all this with us. I am sure
that it will be of tremendous help to those searching for Western
Sephardic ancestors and of great interest to all of us.

Could you help our readers by providing for us the following additional
information?

a) You mention "The ketubot and an index are all available >from the LDS
(and there are published indices as well". What are the LDS film numbers
to ask for?

b) About aliases, you say "But don't worry, the

aliases were registered in the Amsterdam notary, and all the
Jewish-related entries were extracted in the VAz DIAS Collection, also
filmed by the LDS. There are pages of aliases. Joseph DA COSTA was
Joao PERES DA CUNHA as a Catholic trader-he came to New Amsterdam in
1655 and was in Brazil before that-and yes, he is in Amsterdam
records. Along with stories of wills, trouble with the Inquisition,
and much more.

How does one locate these LDS or other useful files? Do you happen to
recall the call numbers?

Thank you so much for your excellent and important contribution. I know
others descended >from the Western Sephardim will find this information
invaluable and may now perhaps join the conversation as we all learn
together.

Those interested may also find some interesting links on the subject at
http://www.jewishgen.org/Sephardic/dutch_sites.htm ,
http://www.sephardicgen.com/dutch_sites.htm ,
and
http://www.sephardicgen.com/books.htm#nworld

Any other western Sephardim out there?

Jeff Malka

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Bruckheimer" <sallybru@...>
Subject: [sephardic] Western European records

I pointed out to Jeff that Sefard SIG seems to refer exclusively to
Eastern European and Ottoman Empire areas - and never seems to mention
the Western European areas where my Sefardic ancestors lived. Since
my only 'Eastern' family is in the 17the century - CAPADOCE,
presumably >from Turkey, and a few, like PALACHE, who wandered back and
forth to Africa, none of that applies to me.

I am hoping that an introduction to Amsterdam records will strike a
chord with a lot of Western European Sephardi. It is absolutely true