I just wanted to chime in regarding the significance of the SPb (Saint Petersburg) records that Joel Ratner mentioned in an earlier post. I meant to write about this much earlier in the year, but at the time, health and work had both gotten in the way. As Covid first picked up and various establishments began to close, Joel had shared on a different thread SPb records were temporarily available online for free. They were written in Cyrillic and not indexed. I myself, do not read Cyrillic and with the unbelievable kindness and guidance of Joel and also using Google translater, I combed through some of the records once I knew how to read the surname FISH in Cyrillic. Lucky for me, it was a short word so it stood out when the writing was legible.

My connection to SPb: My paternal grandfather immigrated to NY and I was always told he was from Saint Petersburg. This was interesting to me considering was I never able to find any DNA matches from Saint Petersburg nor any matches with the surname FISCH. For a long time, I thought it was misinformation or perhaps the surname changed. It is solely because of the temporary access to the SPb records I located both my grandfather and great grandfather's birth certificate. It turned out both were born specifically in Kronstadt. For context of time period, my grandfather was born 1906, my great grandfather, 1875. These records eventually lead me to the names of my 2XGG (b. 1850) and 3x great grandfather, as well as their spouses with their surnames, GRUNER, PAKORNOV, SKOVRONSKY/SKOWRONSKI, SLAVIN, and various siblings, their spouses and descendants. Also, although my great grandmother Esther SKOVRONSKY was born in Kronstadt, her father, was born in Klodawa, Poland (1846).

I share this for the following reasons:

1. With the hopes of finding others with with connections to these surnames as well as other surnames listed in my signature below for this region
2. To share of my family being an example of Jews living around Saint Petersburg pre-1900.
3. To stress how valuable these SPB records are. I wish I had more time to go through the records when they were available because there's still an incredible amount I didn't have the chance to go through. There are a couple of forums that Joel has shared with me that have a couple of these documents indexed (I was able to find one family member on them). That being said, this would be an incredible and beneficial project should there be the means for someone to take it on, especially one who can read Cyrillic. I totally understand the time and cost it would take to do such a thing. JewishGen has been super helpful for identifying records of specific regions, but in terms of this region in Russia there has been no information available, which is unfortunate.
4. My family, despite seemly living in SPb for a few generations, may not have originated from there, as suggested by one specific branch, however I have not confirmed this for other branches of this lineage.

All my best,

--
Tracy Fish
Nevada/Brooklyn, New York
tsfishphotography@...
IG: @tsfish

Researching many surnames including: Belarus: DORINSON/DOROSINSKY, LEIBOWITZ/LEVOVICH, LEVIN; Hungary: FRIEDMAN, HERTZ, KLEIN, WEIS; Poland: CHELMINSKI, FRAJSTMAN/TRAJSTMAN, KIERZENBLAT, LAKOMSKA, LANGMAN, LESZCZYNSKI, LEWKOWICZ, MARKOWSKI, POTOLOWSKA, SKOVRONSKY/SKOWRONSKI, WYGODA; Russia: GORDON, JAFFE, KAPLAN, PAKORNOV, SEBULSKY; Kronstadt/Saint Petersburg, Russia: COHEN, FELDMAN, FISH/FISCH, GRUNER, TSCHESNO, SLAVIN