I have learned from this site that Alter (or Elder) was a nickname often given to sickly children to "fool the Angel of Death".  I also believe that girls were often given the nickname Chaya for the same reason. And I know that my great grandfather Hyman Kern (aka Chaim Eliasz Kern) was born in Czertkov, Galicia (now Ukraine) in 1872.  I believe his parents were Yoessel/Israel/Isaac Kern and Gitel/Kate/Chaya Rost.  But when I plug the family name into Jewishgen, I come up with the attached which I find totally baffling. If it weren't for the sudden appearance of Gittel Kurz, I would assume all these Alter Kerns were the same person.  But it seems there were two Alter Kerns, one married to Gittel or Kate or Chaya Rost and the other married to Gittel Kurz, having children at almost exactly the same time in  Czertkov.  Is there any chance these two Alters were brothers?  Or is it just an odd coincidence?  BTW, if you open the image in a new tab, it is easier to read.   Ronni Kern, Santa Monica, CA

A possible explanation is that there are two Alters, that they are first cousins and that they are both named for the same relative who died not long before they were born.  In my researches, I have come across two such cases where cousins born in the same place, a year or two apart, were given the same name.

Marsha Rosenberg (London, UK)

Adding to Marsha's hypothesis: all of the records for Gittel Kurz's children in the screenshot appear to specifically note that she was born in Jezierizany. That may be another data point in favor of the guess that there were two Alter Kerns in Czortkow: one married to Gittel Kurz from Jezierziany, and one married to Chaya Rost (presumably born in Czortkow itself, since there is no notation specifying a different town of birth).

There are at least a couple of complications here:

-another is that there are actually most likely earlier records than this for the children of Gittel Kurz of Jezierzany. If you search for just the surname Kurz and the town of Jezierzany you'll bring up birth records for Chajem Ellie and Chaje "Kurz", twins born in 1877 in Czortkow with no father's name indexed. That to me looks like another point in favor of there being two different Alters - assuming Chaya Rost's name has been correctly recorded, it strikes me as relatively unlikely that Chaya Rost would have had a daughter with the same name (Chaya).

-One big question is how to reconcile the guess that the two Alters were first cousins with the death record showing the Josef Isaac/Alter who died in 1887, age 40. The reason is that that Alter is clearly the son of a Chaim Elia. The straightforward guess would be that this is your gg-grandfather and that your great-grandfather Hyman was himself named for his father's father (who had the same name). Except...assuming "your" Hyman/Chaim Elia was definitely born around 1872, then how do we explain the Chaim Elia, likely the son of an Alter Kern, who was born to Gittel Kurz of Jezierzany in Czortkow in 1877? If there were two different Alters and they were first cousins to one another, the Chaim Elia born in 1877 would almost certainly not be named for his own grandfather: that would imply that there were two brothers who both had the same name (Chaim Elia).

Maybe looking at more of the original pages, as well as those for other Kerns from Czortkow, will help clarify whether there were indeed two Alters and whether they had some more complicated relationship than first cousins (i.e., second cousins, uncle and nephew, etc.)?

Adam Turner

I would wonder if it isn't the same person. Maybe his wife died and he married Chaja Rost.

Fay Bussgang
Dedham, MA

That there were two wives is a possibility, also (note that it would likely have been the reverse: Chaya Rost would have been the first wife; her daughter Sossie was older than the other known children). Though that interpretation is not without its potential problems, either, given the limited information in the original post:

• The listed age of the Sossie who died in 1884 (daughter of "Chaya Rost") does not quite perfectly match the birthdate of the Sossie who was born in 1875 (daughter of "Gittel")
• It would require us to assume that the OP's knowledge of her great-grandfather's birthdate is off by ~5 years - he would likely be the Chaim Elia born to Gittel Kurz in 1877.
• The OP stated that she believes that her gg-grandmother's name was Chaya Rost - I assumed this came from family lore or from some US vital record rather than from searching JRI-Poland. But the mother of the Chaim-Elia who was born in Czortkow in 1877 is specifically listed in the index as Gittel Kurz.

I am tempted to think that "Chaya Rost" could actually be the same person as Gittel Kurz, that she had a compound name like Chaya-Gittel, and that the "Rost" could have come from the tendency in Galician records to use a person's mother's maiden name as their surname when their parents did not officially register their marriage. The problem with that is that if her name was really Chaya-Gittel, it seems unlikely to me that she would have namedone of her own twins "Chaya" in 1877. There is also the problem that a search in the database shows loads of other people named "Rost" specifically in Czortkow, suggesting that that might have indeed been Sossie's mother's surname rather than a translation/indexing error resulting from the bad condition of the original pages. None of these other Rosts are from Jezierzany.

There is a likely match for one of Gittel Kurz's daughters, with the English name "Jennie," marrying a Morris Weissbrod in Manhattan in 1903:
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:24H3-ZL4
https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/view/8399994 (caution: this link may not be permanent)

There is a Jennie Weisbrod who died in the Bronx in 1961 and is buried in Mount Hebron Cemetery - and the stone lists her name as Zlata bat r'Yitzchak Yosef - suggesting that she was highly likely to have been the Zlata Kern listed in the database as a daughter of Isaac Josef (Alter) Kern and Gittel Kurz of Czortkow, born in 1880.

If the OP knows that Jennie Weisbrod was a sister of her great-grandfather, maybe that is sufficient corroboration that at least the "two" Alters listed in the records are actually the same person?

Curiously, one of the witnesses listed on this marriage record was named Max Rost.

Adam Turner

Adam, all of your sleuthing and deductions are amazing.  Needless to say, I have been absolutely hopeless at deciphering the actual images in JRI-Poland (from AGAD) but your point about Gittel Kurz' hometown being specified whereas Chaya Rost's was not did tend to make me believe they were two different women .  On the other hand,  there are 5 birth records with Gittel Kurz as mother and only the single death record in which Chaya Rost's name appears so now t  am tempted to believe that they are the same woman and that the Gittel listed as Sossie's mother on the 1875 birth record is the same woman as the Chaya Rost who is listed on Sosie's death record in 1884 (though of course the child is listed as being exactly 7 years and 2 months which should have put her birth in 1877 and not 1875.)  Interestingly on Sossie's birth record under her mother's name either Rost or Rose is crossed out.  Of course, this could just have been the name of the midwife put in the wrong spot, crossed out and moved to the next column.

I have no knowledge of any relatives earlier than my great grandfather Chaim.  So I have no idea if he had a sister Jennie I have only been able to find one sibling for him, his brother Frank (or Favish) with whom he apparently did not get on but I am only just beginning my research on this part of my family so others may turn up.    And in all honesty, it probably was from JRI-Poland that I deduced my great great grandparents' names. The symmetry of Josef Isaac/Alter's father parents being  Chaim Elio and Sossie Kern which were in turn the names used for his children was pretty compelling. 

JRI-Poland did uncover a surprise for me when I discovered that Chaim Elias Kern and his wife Gittel Knecht had a boy named Usher in Zhitomir who died within 18 days.  (Usher was Gittel Knecht's father's name.)  On the boy's Zhitomir birth record only his mother was listed because I guess his parents were not considered "legally married" there.  On the boy's death in Chortkiv, however, both his parents are included and his father (my greatgrandfather) is listed as Chaim Eliasz Kern.  I am unable to read the column headings in many of these records but strangely on the boy's birth record in the 4th column from the right, the name Rost appears. So for the time being, at least, I am leaning to the opinion that all these Alter Kerns were the same guy.  Probably the bigger shock to me was that Kern was the family name in the Old Country since many family members have long believed it was an Americanization of Cohen.

Adam, all of your sleuthing and deductions are amazing.  Needless to say, I have been absolutely hopeless at deciphering the actual images in JRI-Poland (from AGAD) but your point about Gittel Kurz' hometown being specified whereas Chaya Rost's was not did tend to make me believe they were two different women .  On the other hand,  there are 5 birth records with Gittel Kurz as mother and only the single death record in which Chaya Rost's name appears so now t  am tempted to believe that they are the same woman and that the Gittel listed as Sossie's mother on the 1875 birth record is the same woman as the Chaya Rost who is listed on Sosie's death record in 1884 (though of course the child is listed as being exactly 7 years and 2 months which should have put her birth in 1877 and not 1875.)  Interestingly on Sossie's birth record under her mother's name either Rost or Rose is crossed out.  Of course, this could just have been the name of the midwife put in the wrong spot, crossed out and moved to the next column.

I have no knowledge of any relatives earlier than my great grandfather Chaim.  So I have no idea if he had a sister Jennie I have only been able to find one sibling for him, his brother Frank (or Favish) with whom he apparently did not get on but I am only just beginning my research on this part of my family so others may turn up.    And in all honesty, it probably was from JRI-Poland that I deduced my great great grandparents' names. The symmetry of Josef Isaac/Alter's father parents being  Chaim Elio and Sossie Kern which were in turn the names used for his children was pretty compelling. 

JRI-Poland did uncover a surprise for me when I discovered that Chaim Elias Kern and his wife Gittel Knecht had a boy named Usher in Zhitomir who died within 18 days.  (Usher was Gittel Knecht's father's name.)  On the boy's Zhitomir birth record only his mother was listed because I guess his parents were not considered "legally married" there.  On the boy's death in Chortkiv, however, both his parents are included and his father (my greatgrandfather) is listed as Chaim Eliasz Kern.  I am unable to read the column headings in many of these records but strangely on the boy's birth record in the 4th column from the right, the name Rost appears. So for the time being, at least, I am leaning to the opinion that all these Alter Kerns were the same guy.  Probably the bigger shock to me was that Kern was the family name in the Old Country since many family members have long believed it was an Americanization of Cohen. 

Ronni Kern
Santa Monica, CA

Ah, just fou8nd Chaya (Kate) Rost on my great grandfather's death certificate.  Now what?  Ronni Kern, Santa Monica, CA

Ronni, death certificates are often incorrect. People are distraught and do not have records with them. 

Gittel might have been the name she preferred, when she was the informant.

In some places, if a newborn died before she was named, the birth/death was recorded with the mother’s given name. It would be interesting to prove that Gittel gave birth to two sets of twins, and which of the children survived.

Linda Wolfe Kelley
Portland, OR, USA

Linda, thanks so much for weighing in.  Adam Turner and I have hashed this thing to death, but the clincher was the fact that the deaths of both Israel Kern and  Josef/Isaac/Alter Kern were recorded in Czortkow two years apart (1887 and 1889) while their given ages implied births a year or less apart.  So they were probably brothers or twins, each of them  naming offspring for their parents: Chaim and Sossie.  Since my great grandfather Chaim stated that Israel was his father's name on his Social Security app (and Kate Ross, close enough was his mother's);    and since he named his second child Israel, I have to assume that that Israel and Kate are my great great grandparents, while Gittel Kurz may be a great great greataunt. 

I suspect the preponderance of twins may well be -- as one respondent noted -- that parents just didn't always get the kids registered promptly.  The other reality is that Chaim Kern's wife was named Gittel Knecht, (another Gittel) Knecht actually being her mother's  name (her father was Usher Frankel) and Gittel's first two children, who were born and died either in Czortkow or enroute to the US were both named Knecht because none of these Jewish marriages were recognized by the authorities.

Ronni Kern, Santa Monica, CA