Dear Galician Researchers:

I'm very pleased to announce that the 1910 Tarnopol Census of the
Jewish Population is available for free searching on the All Galicia
Database. Few censuses of Jewish communities in Galicia >from the 19th
or early 20th centuries survive. The 1910 census of the Jewish
community of Tarnopol, held in the State Archives of Ternopil in Ukraine,
is a rare document that lists just under 14,000 names, almost half of the
total population of the town.

Here's how to search -- and then sort your results -- to display only
those >from this census:

Go to: http://www.search.geshergalicia.org

1. Enter the surname, given name, or both.
2. After the results appear scroll down the far left column to: "Record
Sources."
3. Scroll this alphabetical list or sources to "Tarnopol Jewish Community
Census 1910" and click that link.

To find out details on each record click the plus sign and a drop-down
list will appear showing:

Date of Birth
Town of Record
Town of Birth (Not everyone was born in Tarnopol. This listing can help
identify where relatives were originally from.)
Community Where Registered (Also helpful in linking families to other
communities)
Resident in Tarnopol Since (You can track a family's movements >from
this data.)
Relationship to others in the census (You can reconstruct families
using this information.)
House Number (This was the old house number.)
Street or Square Name (This represents the new street address, useful
in unifying house numbers in records with a street location on newer
maps.)
Number in Street
Occupation (Polish)
Occupation (English)
Additional Comments (Helps to clarify the record entered by officials at
the time or by our translators.)
Image # (The image that corresponds to the page in the original record
book.)

Information on the census:

The 1910 census is ordered by house number. This is the old
numbering, by which every house in the town had a number. However,
a few years before the 1910 census, a comprehensive system of (Polish)
street names had been set up, with every building having a street-name
address and a number within the street. (The address of the building,
for instance, whose old number in the town was 65 became "ulica
Bogata 35".) The census contains both these systems of house
numbering, thus providing a useful conversion guide between the old
numbering and new street names and numbers.

The census also gives the place and full date, or else just the year,
of birth, stating how long (if not >from birth) a person had resided in
the town. Furthermore, the "community of registration" is given =E2=80=93
something that effectively denotes the ancestral town of origin of a
person, even if the person had never spent significant time there.

from the census we can see that only just over two thirds of the Jewish

population were born in Tarnopol. Many of the remainder came >from
other parts of Galicia, east (mainly) as well as west -- including, in
descending order of numbers, the towns and districts of Skalat (415
people), Zbaraz, Brody, Brzezany, Zloczow, Mikulince, Trembowla,
Husiatyn, Lwow, Zborow, Zalozce, Grzymalow, Borszczow and some 20
other localities. However, some 191 people were recorded as having
been born in the Russian Empire, particularly in the districts of Odessa,
Kiev and Zhitomir.

Other towns of birth include Vienna, Berlin, New York, London,
Bratislava, Winnipeg and Leipzig, while regions or countries of birth
listed include Hungary, America, Romania, Moravia, France, Bukovina
and Lithuania. In the case of Winnipeg, the census describes the town
as "Winnipeg, Canada, America".

Those were some of the places Tarnopol residents of 1910 had come
from. But where did they go to? A sizable number of people listed in the
census were not apparently living in Tarnopol at the time. Some may
have been temporarily absent, as students, apprentices or workers --
often in Vienna, Lwow or other Galician towns or villages. But the
extent to which the population had dispersed to places further afield
was remarkable. In Germany, the cities of Berlin, Bremen, Cologne,
Dresden, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Leipzig and Munich are all
mentioned as destinations for Jewish residents of Tarnopol who were
away, temporarily or not so temporarily, at the time of the census. Other
cities around the world listed in this connection included
London, Jerusalem, New York, Odessa, Paris, Prague, Riga, Sarajevo and
Vienna. Countries and territories mentioned included America,
Argentina, Bosnia, Hungary, Russia, Silesia and Switzerland.

The census records the occupations or professions of about 40% of the
people listed in the document, a significant proportion of whom were
school pupils or students. It also provides the family relationships
within a household -- an important inclusion for those researching
their family history. Researchers will find women enumerated as "ritual
wife," clarifying that there was a religious marriage, but that the woman
did not share her husband's surname. This should be of assistance in
clarifying relationships and the dual surnames many children (who were
often recorded as illegitimate in official records.)

For further clarification on the census, please read the full notes on this
database available on the results listings or here:
http://search.geshergalicia.org/about_1910_tarnopol_census.php

No known research in Tarnopol? Think again! The following towns have
over a hundred mentions in the census, with many, many other shtetls
appearing:

Zbaraz (519)
Mikulince (379)
Lwow (262)
Brody (212)
Brzezany (187)
Skalat (186)
Zloczow (173)
Zalozce, Brody (161)
Kozlow, Brzezany (128)
Grzymalow, Skalat (119)
Husiatyn (119)
Jezierna, Zborow (116)
Kozlow (116)
Zborow (115)
Zalozce (109)

The translation of the professions (or the status of a resident) was a
complicated one. Many of the terms were antiquated. The descriptions
of the schools was imprecise. We recruited several volunteers to assist
us in coming up with exactly the right phrase to explain an occupation
and to convey the correct meaning for the era. >from "doorkeeper in a
lottery ticket outlet" and "seamstress's apprentice" to "cashier for a
Jewish congregation" to "brothel owner" we hope to convey the vibrancy
and variety of the work performed by the population of this town.

A special thanks....

Gesher Galicia would especially like to thank board member Tony
Kahane (London), who oversaw the entire project >from start to finish and
Jurek Hirshberg (Sweden), who did a first pass on translating all the
professions so we could begin fine tuning. Additional thanks to Fay &
Julian Bussgang (Massachusetts), Piortr Pininski, Wanda Jozwikowska
(Virtual Shtetl) & Piotr Gumola (Warsaw), and Alex & Natalie Dunai &
Tomasz Jankowski (Lviv) for their assistance with these translations.
Ann Harris and Renee Steinig assisted with creating the surname list
available on our website, and we thank our hardworking indexing team
in Warsaw as well.

Again, the URL is: http://search.geshergalicia.org

In about two weeks we will offer you the ability to order scans of the
pages that contain records of interest. Current Gesher Galicia members
are allowed to order two free scans as part of their membership dues.
I'll announce when this program is up and running. For those who made
special contributions to receive scans, we should be ready for you soon.
If you have not renewed your 2014 membership yet, this is the time!

Go to: http://www.geshergalicia.org/join-gesher-galicia/

(If you are not sure, contact: bentysch@... .)

The March issue of "The Galitzianer" will be published soon, and only
current members will receive it.

If you make discoveries in the pages of this census, please let us know
or consider writing a story about your findings for a future issue of "The
Galitzianer."

And watch for an announcement >from Brooke Schrier Ganz soon about
the additional exciting databases uploaded to the AGD!

Go forth Galitzianers!

Pamela Weisberger
President & Research Coordinator
pweisberger@...
www.geshergalicia.org