Dear Herr Winter,

Thank you for your advice. I will follow up with the KGJ. My Heilbrunn family's ancestral village is Frickhofen where I can trace them back to 1780. Before that an ancestor may have lived in Emerichenhain though for how long I don't know.

Peter Heilbrunn

I have met Todd at LDS. He has two emails:

KnowlesCollection@...
knowleswt@...

Kopyl connection, or coincidence?  As I mentioned above, my grandfather, Isaac Usdansky, who was from Kopyl, spent several years in Sioux City. In the 1918-1919 time frame, he moved to San Antonio, TX, where his siblings and nieces had moved from Sioux City several years prior. In 1919, my grandfather went back to NYC and married my grandmother, Rebecca Schiller (changed by the family from Sinienski, not at Ellis Island!) whom he had never met, then took her back to TX in time for the 1920 census. My cousins and I believe it was an arranged marriage; my question is how was it arranged?

My grandmother and her family were from Lyubcha and Korelitz (both show up on passenger manifests; they're about 15 miles apart. My grandmother arrived in the US in 1914, and in 1915 was living with one of her sisters and the sister's family. However, my grandmother also had a married aunt, Masha,  (in NYC) who had come to the US in 1891. Masha was already married when she came over with her two sons - to Jacob from Kopyl. I'm wondering if there was a prior Kopyl connection between Jacob and Isaac.

Here's my fairy-tale version. Grandma's Uncle Jacob gets a letter from his fellow Kupilier, 50-year old Isaac, saying he needs a wife. Jacob responds, saying his wife has a 34-year old niece, Rebecca, who fits the bill. Isaac takes the train to NY, marries Rebecca, heads back to TX, and they live happily ever after. I this scenario even plausible?

Family lore said my great-grandfather Kasdan had his name changed at Ellis Island to Cohen because the clerk could not understand and asked "Are you Jewish?" Makes no sense because Ellis Island had multiple agents with knowledge of multiple languages. A genealogist suggested it might have happened in Amsterdam because they had fewer agents at that departure port. The ship manifest had Cohen, yet, when his wife and children arrived a few years later,they used the name Kasdan.

Your cousin may have changed the spelling at the suggestion of the immigration officer, but the immigration officer, himself did not do it.  

David Rosen
Boston, MA

My family is KESSLER from Brooklyn originally from Starrokonstaniov, Ukraine. My great grandfather Aaron KESSLER and Lena SACHS. My grandfather Abraham KESSLER and Frieda LURIE. My dad Frederick KESSLER and Joan KEILES. 

Unfortunately I don’t know if there is a connection to Harold KESSLER.

Regards
Rachel KESSLER PARK

 

Thanks for responding

I have no paper - or image - records

I am working on a 30K collection of burials in Mokkom Sholom / Bayside / Acacia cemeteries assembled by Florence Marmor

David

Perhaps there was a difference between a full name change to a spelling modification. My cousin arrived in the US in the 1930's from Germany. His name was SCHULMANN. He told me that the immigration officer told him that if he wanted he could drop the second 'N', and that to do so later would be complicated. He agreed, and from then on his name was SCHULMAN.

David Shapiro
Jerusalem

Erika,
     These are the child's Hebrew/religious/Jewish/Yiddish name.  First of all, I say Hebrew/religious/Jewish/Yiddish because they are essentially the same thing.  Whether the name is of Hebrew or Yiddish derivation, it is the name used for religious purposes.  These names may or may not correspond to the secular version of their name, just like in modern times the secular name may or may not correspond to the Hebrew/religious/Jewish/Yiddish name.  Take my own daughters as an example.  Sara Grace has the religious name of Sarah Basha (Yiddish), Alisa Lauren has the religious name of Aliza Lior (Hebrew).  They're just the names we chose.
     In these records you will also notice that not every Jakab is Yakov and not every Simon is Shimon.  I've seen Jakabs given the religious name of Hirsch Tzvi and Simons given the names of Shimson (Samson), Shlomo (Solomon) and Yakov.  :-)
     These names are not found on all Hungarian birth records.  For example, in my ancestral town of Körmend, there are two sets of birth records available on familysearch microfilms.  One set has the religious name, but not the father's occupation or the parents' towns of origin.  The other set has the father's occupation and parents' town of origin, but not the religious name.  So the lesson is to search all record sets, because you might find different information on each register.  In other communities where there is only one register, it may or may not have the religious names.  Sometimes the religious names are on the earliest records for a given town, but that's all.  And sometimes the reverse is true--you might see them on later records, but on the earlier ones.  It's pretty hit and miss.  And if the religious name is included at all, it's usually on birth records.  I've seldom seen them on death or marriage records.
     These names are incredibly helpful for research, but they are not always transcribed.  Maybe capturing religious names wasn't part of the assignment, or maybe the transcriber didn't know Hebrew/Yiddish.  So the other lesson is that it always pays to look at the original record to see if there is additional information there.  Records that were transcribed early on tend to have the least information--the instructions for the project were pretty much just to capture names and dates.  It is now the standard to pretty much capture all the information on a given record--witnesses' names, notations of name changes or conversions, pretty much everything except the midwife's name!  :-)  So again, if the original record is available, it's always a good idea to check it.
     Best,

             Judy Petersen

I am sure this picture was taken in the 1890s.  London certainly had electricity in the home, Brixton , (a London suburb) had Electric Avenue, which was to the best of my knowledge, the first street to be lit by electricity in 1880.
Interestingly, even in the 1950s, many of the street lamps in the City of London were still lit by gas. I remember the man coming every afternoon with his long pole with which he switched on  the gas and lit it.

Yes it could be a transcription error for "internment".  But if it is not an error, an "Instrument" in England is a document by which something of legal significance is done.  For example a document notifying the authorities of a death (a death certificate) might be described as an "instrument".  In this case the death might have taken place on 30 July, the death certificate might have been completed on 31 July and the entry in the register of deaths might have been made on 21 Aug.

Hi Anna

Belarus used to be part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Pale of Settlement until the wars of the 20th century, when it frequently changed hands  It became part of Russia in 1922, and then after WW2 part of the USSR in 1945 (known as White Russia), and then Belarus on the break up of the USSR. The (London) Times Atlas of European History published by Harper Collins has detailed maps of the different transitions.

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK

-
אבא שלו פדה את בני בכורי

מי אתה עבורם האבא שלו פדה את בני בכורי

Perhaps the date of instrument is the date of signing of the certificate and the date of record is the filing date with the registering authority.

It would help to know where this happened.  Link to original?
--
Paul Hattori
London UK

SHADUR, SADUR, SHADER, SADER, CHADOUR, SADOUR, SHADOUR,  SZADUR from Salakas, Lithuania
MINDEL, MINDELL from Utena and Vyzuonos, Lithuania
FELLER from Pabrade, Lithuania

Whose Birth certificate are you looking for ?  Are you trying to find the relationship between Daniel & Erich Blumenthal ?

Erich's birth and marriage certificate are digitized on  Ancestry.com 

David, my guess is that this is referring to the date of the original legal document.  An instrument in contracts/legal terminology is usually a formal legally binding  signed document
--
Cynthia Hollinsworth

As Corinna said, it is very difficult to find sources before
1700, even for German fmilies.

In addition, the Hessian region before 1800 is a patchwork
of many individual independent territories. For the time
before 1700 it must be determined who had which rights in
the individual places. Only then there is a chance to find
an archive where documents may be found. Then the search
starts, where this archive has remained and whether it
survived the Second World War unscathed.

In Hesse there is an institution called "Kommission für die
Geschichte der Juden in Hessen", which researches the
history and has issued some publications:
<https://kgj-hessen.de/home-en.html>

Ernst-Peter Winter, Münster (Hessen)