My mother's mother is listed with the birth name of Lapinski on some of her children's birth certificates and Berger on others. My mother told me her mother's father had been adopted by a family with no sons in order to avoid the draft. (The tsar's policy was to draft Jewish men, but not if they were only sons.) Do you think that might be the reason for the two different names? Is there any way of telling which was her father's real family?
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Carol Agate
Cambridge, MA 
carolagate34@...

It could be.  I have certainly heard of that.  My  (step) great grandfather's story is very similar - he bought papers to avoid the Czarist conscription.  I had thought that they were papers of someone who had served, but it could also be an "adult" adoption.  BTW, according to my mother (z'l) boys were subject to the draft at a young age - maybe as young as 10 or 12.
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Sarah L Meyer
Georgetown TX
ANK(I)ER, BIGOS, KARMELEK, PERLSTADT, STOKFISZ, SZPIL(T)BAUM, Poland
BIRGARDOVSKY, EDELBERG, HITE (CHAIT), PERCHIK Russia (southern Ukraine) and some Latvia or Lithuania
https://www.sarahsgenies.com