Perl and Herman Katz resided in Munkacs, survived the war and sometime in the early 70's moved to Israel.  They are my cousins.  I am wondering if there is a contact person in the Jewish Comunity in Mukachevo currently?  Or if any one on this list knows the whereabouts of the Katz children today?   Thank you.

Stuart Kaufer

Dear fellow researchers,

Tax censuses (family lists) from Krolevets uezd (district) in 1888 have now been translated and transcribed as part of the Chernigov Gubernia Document Translation Project. The Krolevets lists include 185 different surnames, which I have extracted and attached to this email. The original pages can be seen online on the FamilySearch website in FHL film 1222347, Item 9. 

Previously as part of this project we have translated tax censuses from the Glukhov, Starodub, Konotop, Mglin, Oster, and Borzna uezds in 1882, from film 1222346 and additional censuses from the Mglin uezd in 1882 from film 1222347. This work is possible because of generous donations from so many who are interested in records from the former Chernigov gubernia.

Those who donate $100 or more to the Chernigov Gubernia Document Translation Project on the JewishGen website are eligible to view the completed spreadsheets before they are uploaded to the website. Please contact me with proof of your donation if you want to see any of the spreadsheets as listed above. All donations of any size are appreciated and will continue to advance the project. You can donate through the following link: 

https://www.jewishgen.org/jewishgen-erosity/v_projectslist.asp?project_cat=22

The information from the translation spreadsheets will be uploaded to the JewishGen website at some point in the future. Some have already been uploaded and may be searched by name. They are classified on the JewishGen website as Revision Lists, although they are slightly different from a Revision List (another type of Russian census).

I hope you are all getting a lot of online genealogy research done while staying safe.

Best wishes,

Beth Galleto
Project Leader

 

--
Barbara Ellman
Secaucus NJ USA
HASSMAN, SONENTHAL, DAUERMAN, LUCHS - Drohobycz, Ukraine
HIRSCHHORN, GOLDSTEIN, BUCHWALD - Dolyna, Ukraine
ELLMAN, COIRA, MAIDMAN - Minkovtsy, Ukraine
KAGLE, FASS - Ulanow, Poland

Pauline(Perl) SESSLER (mother was Raizel SHILLER) was born in 1867 in Tluste, Austria or nearby and married Hersh SPINNER(aka Hersh KNEIZER) born around 1860.  She immigrated to NYC in 1921 and by the 1930 census was listed as a widow using the SESSLER name.  Where were they married and when did he die? Were they divorced?  She’s buried in Beth David, Elmont on March 22, 1943.  Hersh was the son of Eli KNEIZER and Eli’s other sons (Meier and Joseph) used the SPINNER name.  This is the brick wall I’m trying to crack.  Can’t seem to make headway in Tluste now Tovste, Ukraine nor in the US.  Hersh has disappeared!!!!!   The marriage is interesting since Hersh was my grandfather (Meier SPINNER)’s brother and Pauline (Perl) SESSLER was the sister of my grandmother Simi SESSLER. Simi appeared to use her mother’s last name SHILLER.  I’m thinking children carried mother’s surname since most marriages were religious, not civil.  I’m really struggling with this.  Any suggestions would really help.......

Paula Spinner Schwartz
AVON, CT

Tluste (SPINNER, SESSLER, SIEBENBERG, SHILLER, SCHECTER)

Ides Selzer Morgenstern died in Mikulnice in 1892. Her parents were Naftali and Reisl Selzer from Trembowla. I have been in contact with someone who may be related to her-and me. My PGGP were Naftali and Reisl Selzer from Trembowla. However, I have no record of who Ides' husband was before she died, or if she had any children. Any/all assistance to match her with other relatives would be greatly appreciated. Though it may be possible that there were two Selzer families in the town with the exact same names, I wonder if anyone knows of any other descendants of Naftali and Reisl Selzer from Trembowla that might have been born between 1850-1870, or so. Thank you.
Milton Koch
Bethesda, MD, USA
SELZER-Trembowla

Hello, I will be conducting interactive one-hour online genealogy classes this Fall on a wide array of topics.  I will be commencing with two different three-part Basics Series, one introducing Jewish genealogical research and another introducing United States research more broadly.  The upcoming classes are:

Mark,

1. The reason why Edward's first papers (Declaration) state "District Court, Cleveland, OH" on top, but "Common Pleas Court, Canton, OH" on the bottom is that he filed twice:  the first time in Common Pleas in 1924, but he apparently did not continue the process.  The Declaration expires after 7 years, so he had to re-file, which he did in District Court in 1941.

2.  Papers were portable, so the final papers did not need to be filed in the same court as the first papers.  He filed his final papers (Petition) in L.A. District Court in 1944.

3. There were multiple copies made of naturalization papers: one stayed with the court and one went to INS (now USCIS).  USCIS response time was very slow, even before the pandemic.  NARA has copies from the district courts, but not local & state courts from early naturalizations.  Also, NARA has not yet digitized all of their holdings. 

The good news is that FamilySearch does have the images from many courts.   I would start by searching the FamilySearch catalog (https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/search ).  Since you do not know which court, or exactly when your grandfather naturalized, you will first need to look at indexes.  I'd do keyword searches on both "Stark County naturalization" and "Cleveland naturalization" and look at the collections of indexes.  You will find that digital images of the index cards are available; however, only some can be viewed from home, whereas others are restricted to viewing at a Family History Center.

Once you have found the court and date/petition number for the naturalization, do the keyword search again, but this time you want to look at the collections of records, not indexes. 

Regards,
David Oseas

Researching:
HYMAN/HEYMAN/HEIMOWITS/CHAJMOVITS: Zemplen-Dobra, Hungary > New York
KLEIN: Satoraljaujhely (Ujhely), Hungary > New York > Los Angeles
KRONOWITH: Hungary > New York
OSEAS/OSIAS/OSIASI/OZIAS: Iasi, Romania > Chicago > Milwaukee > Los Angeles
SCHECHTER/SHEKTER: Kishinev, Bessarabia > New York  
SHERMAN: Iasi, Romania > New York > Los Angeles
STRUL:  Iasi, Romania > Haifa, Israel
WICHMAN: Syczkowo (Bobruisk), Belarus > Milwaukee > Los Angeles

I documented the name changes in my family by using the AKA feature on my genealogy program. If yours does not have that, perhaps you can put it in notes attached to that record, citing sources as you would for any other data.
--
Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC

Seven days ago, AncestryDNA make a drastic unannounced change to the way
they report shared DNA matches. They stopped showing *any* matches
below 20 cM. This is devastating to many people, because many important
matches occur right below 20 cM.

Also, as of September 1st, they removed *all* matches below 8.0 cM.
This action was announced on the website. They said that if you starred
a match, created groups and put the matches in them or sent them a note,
those matches would be preserved.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who began frantically trying to save
every match they could, because, for the past week, the servers were
sluggish, kept crashing, and often went down for two hours or so at a
time. Ancestry finally had to post an apology and said they were
working on the problem. As of September 1st, when the change went into
effect, the servers were fully back to normal. I managed to save just
under 7,500 matches. I know there were many more I was unable to save
before the deadline, and wonder just what discoveries I've missed out on.

I had called AncestryDNA customer service to complain. The young man I
spoke to was shocked when I told him about the 20 cM limit on shared
matches. He told me that was never announced (no kidding!) and that the
customer service people weren't told about it either. (Unreal!) I also
told him that without the ability to see shared matches below 20 cM and
without the matches below 8.0 cM, I, and others, have very little hope
of being able to find out how more distant cousins are connected.

I told him I think I figured out a bit of a workaround, but it involves
an enormous amount more work, and both parties have to work together,
which means you'd have to contact every single person and gain their
cooperation for hours of work. This is totally insane!

I just discovered two distant cousins with many surnames in common, but
with these changes to AncestryDNA, we may never be able to find the
connection between us, and we really want to find it.

In all my years, I have never seen a business do such a thing. We all
paid for the data they gave us. Then they go and take the data away
from us!! No one asked *me* if I agreed to that! If they wanted to
make a change, they should have done it with new customers, and left us
old customers and our data and matching system alone!!

The young man in customer service filed two complaints for me. He also
gave me an email address to write to find out if the data was dumped or
stored somewhere. If it's stored, I want my data back!!

I wrote to the email address and got a "canned" response this morning.
I wrote them again, telling them I didn't appreciate that, and want my
questions answered.

I've also tried calling the corporate HQ, but no one answers. Probably
due to the pandemic. I will call again today.

I wanted to let you all know about this, because I'm discovering many
people had no idea these changes happened. They're quite upset when
they find out. AncestryDNA is nowhere near as useful as it was.

Jeri Friedman
Port Saint Lucie, Florida
--
teewinot13@...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
RESEARCHING: FRIEDMAN, MILLER, BERKOWITZ (Grodno,
Poland/Russia/Belarus); GEIST (?,Russia); GLICKMAN, KLUGMAN, STURMAN,
KAPLAN, ROTENBERG (Bilgoraj, Lublin, Poland/Russia); LIEB/LEIBOWITZ,
BLAU (Jassy/Iasi, Romania); GALINSKY, GELLIS (Suwalki, Poland/Russia);
KRASNOPOLSKY, SILBERMAN/SILVERMAN (Krasnopol, Poland/Russia)
KOPCIANSKY (?, Poland/Russia); GOLDSTEIN, SCHRAGER (?, Romania);
CYRULNIK (Suwalki, Poland/Russia and Kalvarija, Lithuania)

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus

I would suggest for Yale Zussman and others who are sharing with cousins that you maintain a list or database of those you share with noting their relationship to you and their contact information and perhaps contact for their next generation. This gives them more ways to find each when you are no longer here running the whole project.  Depending on privacy concerns this could be included with the materials you give to each branch or could stay with your personal papers and be prominently labeled with importance of sending it out in the future.

Emily Rosenberg

Hi Isabel,

I'm not sure we are related but my great grandfather was named Morris Weiss aka Max Voskoboynik. I know he was born in Helem, Russia (not sure about the Turkish/Romanian connection), but  he lived in Paris as a tailor in the Marais district with my great grandmother Marie aka Miriam Lea Berkowitz. They resided there around the turn of the century, married in 1904 and eventually moved to Cleveland, Ohio in 1913 after going back and forth. My grandmother was born in 1908 in Cleveland. She must have been the anchor baby as her older brother was born in Paris in 1905. I think Morris had a sister who was married to a man named Prigal. She also lived in Paris at the same time. Obviously, there are many men named Morris Weiss. Let me know if any of this rings a bell. Best of luck with your efforts! Best, Eve Kummel

Looking for my grandfather's records. The 1940 census indicates he had his "first papers". His brothers also applied/received citizenship around the same time. My question is: Are my grandfather's records at the county court or USCIS (or somewhere else)? 
Here's the situation: I found records for one brother (Edward) on Ancestry, I suppose because he finished in Los Angeles, and Ancestry has those records transcribed. Anyway, the first papers say "District Court, Cleveland, OH" at the top, but they say "Common Pleas Court, Canton, OH" at the bottom. The second papers say "District Court, Los Angeles" at the top and "District Court, Cleveland" at the bottom.

I searched the National Archives' online scans of the Northern District of Ohio, Cleveland, (here and here), and I couldn't find any records on my grandfather or his brothers, not even Edward, even though he sent his first papers to Cleveland. (And I checked all spelling variations of our last name). 

But just now, a relative sent me another brother's (Hyman) certificate of naturalization which he received in 1940. It says it was issued by the Common Pleas Court of Stark County, Canton, OH.

I've already submitted an index search request to USCIS, but I'm wondering if I should also find someone to search the Stark County Court's archives (has to be done in-person). Where are they supposed to be? Maybe another location? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Mark Horowitz

Thank you everyone for your help!! All the links were so helpful, the Lodz photographer with Refotographie is stunning, and I was thrilled to find documents on the Geneaology Indexer site as well as the Polish State Archives. 

For those of you that have used Geneology Indexer, do you have recommendations on how to view the files? My computer seems to download them as dju files and I am not sure how to open them.

Thank you again for all your help,
Andrew Cooke

I searched using only the last name, the ship, and the arrival month.  Was surprised to see Meier matching the age and the occupation. 

David Rosen
 
 

Hello everybody,  I am back again, and have a number of new finding to discuss with you.

Here is the first - Формулярный Список о Службе  - Service Form List.  It was used in 19 century and beginning of 20th century in Russian Empire for mostly nobles, to list their positions in the government and social institutions, estates, holdings, awards, family, etc.  Such list for one person could be on 20 pages or more.  Why I am mentioning this to you?   We did not find Jews nobles in Bessarabia?!  But we did have a lot of Jews who served on different positions in government, other institutions.

You may know that we have a database specifically for this:  Jews in Public Life in Bessarabia. See description of it at https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Romania/BessarabiaPublic.htm

While I was working on Revision list pages, I found a Service Form List for a Jew, Merchant of Second Gild Naum ben Alter KITROSER.  The reason that such document was written, Naum was a Manager of Soroki Mutual Credit Society (1905).   If look into our database Jews in Public Life in Bessarabia,  Naum KITROSER was a Member of Soroki City Counsel in 1916.

There is a full page of information about that person in the Service Form List. It appeared that he owned 166 acre of land in Zguritsa, Soroki uezd, etc.

I have added that family into our database "Revision list and other lists",  but I want to ask  the group if anyone with Russian would like to translate all the positions he held, everything....  and that we can add as an article on our Bessarabia website.  

All the best,
Yefim Kogan
Bessarabia Research Leader and Coordinator

In Russian:

 

Посад Вышков

#120

 

Состоялось в посаде Вышков 4-го (16-го) июля 1885-го года, в 10 часов утра.  Явился Литман Зильберман, 26-и лет, портной, живущий в посаде Вышков, в присутствии свидетелей: Вульф Цимбаль, верующего учителя, 59-и лет и Мошка 

Голанд, 60-и лет, торговца, живущих в посаде Вышков, и предъявили младенца женского пола, объявляя, что она родилась в посаде Вышков 1-го (13-го) июля текущего года, в 10 часов вечера, от законной жены Гинды-Двойры, урожденной Ягода, 22-х лет.  Младенцу этому дано имя Хая-Сура.  Аkт объявляющим прочитан и подписан отцом.  Свидетели не грамотны.

 

Чиновник гражданского состояния    Подпись 

 

Translate into English:

 

Posad Vyshkov

# 120

 

It took place in the settlement of Vyshkov on July 4 (16), 1885, at 10 am. Litman Zilberman, 26 years old, a tailor living in the Vyshkov settlement, appeared in the presence of witnesses: Wolf Tsimbal, a believing teacher, 59 years old, and Moshka

Goland, 60 years old, a merchant living in the Vyshkov settlement, and presented a female baby, announcing that she was born in the Vyshkov settlement on July 1 (13) of this year, at 10 pm, from the lawful wife of Hinda- Dvoira, nee Yagoda, 22 years old. This baby is given the name Haya-Sura. Act by the proclaimed is read and signed by the father. The witnesses are not literate.

 

Civil Status Official Signature

Translated By Michael Ryabinky

Does anyone have recent information on how to contact the Kaunas Regional Archives? I need to see the original record for a 1911 Municipal Voters list from Kavarskas that is held there. Several years ago JewishGen had provided instructions stating that we should write or email the request to:

Thanks. I'm still learning. Were you able to connect Isaac to Meier by age and occupation, or is there something in the name Meier also? Thanks again.
--
Carl Kaplan

KAPLAN Minsk, Belarus
EDELSON, EDINBURG Kovno, Lithuania
HOFFERT, BIENSTOCK< BIENENSTOCK Kolbuszowa, Galicia
STEINBERG, KLINGER, WEISSBERG, APPELBERG Bukaczowce, Galicia