Newbies

NEWBIES

"You can see a lot by observing"
Yogi Berra

Before you get too deeply involved in researching your Jewish roots, I would suggest reading up on both this subject and about the countries you will be working with. Just by reading beforehand you should be able to pick up a great deal of information. Click on my link to Amazon.com > Jewish Genealogy where you will find at least 180+ titles to work with in your personal quest.

Why this page ...

This page should be of great value to the first time genealogist and even to some of the more experienced researchers. What this page represents are some of the questions and answers about a genealogical subject. Researching one's genealogy can be hard work, but seeing how historical events have affected generations or individuals in your family, and how it all resulted in your birth, will make history come alive for you and for future generations.

To get started with your research, follow these suggestions:

Conduct interviews - ask elderly relatives for stories and information about their families and their childhoods. Take notes while you record the interviews on audio or video tape.

Search for documents. Vital records like birth, marriage and death certificates.

Search for family in the U. S. Census or possibly the census of the country they were born or lived in. Check immigration records as well as naturalization records and passenger arrival records.

Check Social Security Death Index for list of records of deceased persons who possessed Social Security numbers. Should you find an ancestor in this index, you can request his or her Social Security application.

"I have five 3-ring binder notebooks with very large rings. they are paternal side, maternal side, husband's paternal side, husband's maternal side. The fifth one is our combined family, that is our papers, our children's papers and our parents' papers. Could not figure out how to file our parents' because they come from separate families and combined, so this was more logical for me."

"In each binder I have those tab section divider things we used in school to separate our English notes from our social studies notes. They are labeled with different records such as:

Birth and Death; Marriage; Naturalization and ship manifests; Cemeteries and tombstones; Letters from people; Maps; Genealogy Reports; Military; Social Security (SS-5) applications."

"You get the idea. I find this works very well for me and I know where I can find anything I need to look at. Nothing falls out and I can carry it around. If I want to take some papers elsewhere, I can place them into a small binder temporarily. My problem is that I need to be disciplined enough to file them immediately rather than letting them accumulate for six months into a mountain of papers." From a posting by Linda Morzillo

Genealogy Articles, Tips & Research Guides - authored by Joe Beine
http://www.genealogybranches.com/

Q. Where can I find some basic information about researching?

A. Try this site:
http://www.bottomlinesecrets.com/verity_search/v_search_results.cfm

I also am quite impressed with Gary Palgon's web site and so will you
http://www.familytreeexpert.com/

Q. What if the library doesn't have the family history books or documents you need for your research?

A. Most major university libraries subscribe to The Research Libraries Information Network, an international shared information resource. Most libraries also help patrons use the service for a small charge. Here is a link to more information
http://www.rlg.org/rlin.html

Q. How do I find my ancestral shtetl?

ShtetLinks - a JewishGen web site that was developed to give genealogists who are interested in a particular shtetl in Belarus; Bessarabia; Latvia; L; Galicia; Moldova; Poland; Romania; Slovakia; Ukraine and elsewhere that Jews have lived in the past
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/

Q. If I know what ship my ancestors came by, will that tell me what city they lived in?

" If the immigrant was naturalized, the INS will be able to get you records which would include a lot of information about where they came from. Similarly, if the immigrant had a Social Security account, Social Security might be able to help.

For further information, please read the JewishGen FAQ
or a genealogy book-either will give you lots of good information. Posted by Sally Bruckheimer sallybruc@yahoo.com on 5/9/03 on JewishGen

Q. When I write the name of a place or of some event, which city and country name should I be using. The one that it is currently known by or the one or ones it was known before?

A. Roberta Sheps roberta.sheps@ntlworld.com replied"

"For countries, I would be as specific as possible. Just writing "Russia" is meaningless if the person was born in Belarus or Ukraine, and won't help others who might not know exactly where the town was.

Naming towns is a bit more complicated because it is more helpful to have both the name at the time the relative was born and that which is in use now. But I don't think it matters which you put first, and you can put the other in parentheses next to it.

"Just as it is today, it was fairly common for people from smaller towns to identify the more well-known region or Guberniya as their place or area of residence. For many of us living today in suburban areas, we will often reference the larger well-known urban area as our residence." From a posting by Jerry Schneider to JewishGen on 4-3-02

Q. My relatives has 2 names - the Jewish one and the 'Soviet' - for example Vulf and Vladimir. Which one should I write as 'Name' and which one as 'Also Known As"? There is also a third name - 'short' name which was used by most people - for example: 'official name' - Lyubov, but most people use Lyuba or even Lyubochka.

A. With the possibility of three names things get even more complicated, but I think it's your choice. All I would say, is be consistent if at all possible. I have tended to put the 'official' (in my case) English name first, if there is one; many of my relatives have chosen not to give their children an English equivalent name. My program doesn't show more than one name in the 'name' field, so I have to put any others in as separate notes.

What's important for genealogists is that you get the Hebrew/Yiddish name in somewhere to help in tracing family members back.

"Are the passenger lists in the National Archives the same as the manifests at Ellis Island?"

Yes, they are the same.

A tip for using the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex on JewishGen-hosted databases (including JRI, but excluding Steve Morse's Ellis Island One-Step): If you're sure of the first letter of the name (or the first two or three or more...) put those letters in brackets to limit your results. For example, a "Sounds Like" search on JRI-Poland for [GR]ABER will give you names resembling GRABER that begin with GR; the same search without brackets will also bring up names like GERBER, HARPER, and KORBER. From a posting by Renee Stern Steinig

Q. Many immigration records state that the person came from 'Russia' or 'Russian Empire'.

A. Jews were recorded as coming from Russia because the U.S. and other authorities used the terms "Russia" and "Russian Empire" as synonyms. The Jews from "Russia" were subjects of the Czar, and had to foreswear that allegiance to become U.S. citizens.

The fact that there was a region within the Russian Empire that was seen by some as "Russia Proper" is irrelevant to the issue of why Jews were recorded as coming from "Russia'.

Nevertheless, "Russia" was a very large place, Jews were restricted as to the parts of the Russian Empire they could inhabit, and this too, is important to understand if one wants to effectively search out ancestral origins. Peter Zavon pzavon@worldnet.att.net discussed the above question in a posting on JewishGen on Oct. 11, 1999

EIDB Question

I wrote in recently asking for assistance finding my grandfather in EIDB. I received a lot of good advice, and one nice lady even spent a fair amount of time looking through NARA passenger lists. Alas it was all to no avail but I thought the least I could do beside thank all the kind people who helped me (I did so individually) was to share some of the good points with the discussion group. Here they are:

1. Passenger manifests may be missing and if so you may be out of luck.
2. Search EIDB using varying spellings of both names, or Soundex, maiden
names for males and females, and the local spelling of names, like Szapira,
for Shapiro, Sjapiro, Schapiro, etc.
3. Do a full search of any one town for all comers on Morse 1 step, with
and without Soundex..
4. Your relatives may have come through another port.
5. Try to access naturalization documents which will give you origins,
exact dates of immigration, family names, etc.
6. Search EIDB around 6:30 AM EDT, & you'll find the searches much faster
due to little traffic. The West Coasters are definitely in dreamland, and
the Easterners are getting ready for work.

I hope this helps someone. Barry Sieger, Winter Park, Florida bsieger@cfl.rr.com

Original Documents - Never, ever travel or carry around an original document! Make copies right away and store the original in an archival safe box

Netiquette Home Page and Help with Internet E-mail
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.html
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/0963702513p32.html
http://www.infinisource.com/lifestyles/effective-email.html

Polish Archive Question:

Regarding the message below: Nearly every town has a USC. There really
should be no reason to add a street address. The mail deliverer certainly
knows where it is. Dan Kazez Ohio, USA
http://www.kazez.com/~dan/0203.Power/Attny.html

Subject: Need address for USC, Hrubieszow
From: "Yaacov Slizak" yslizak@yahoo.com
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 2003 19:58:47 -0000

Dear Friends,
Can anybody help with the exact address for the USC (Urzad Stanu Cywilnego) in Hrubieszow, Poland? I haven't been able to find it. Sincerely, Yaacov Slizak Ennis, Co. Clare, Ireland

Basic Genealogy Research Links and Instructions
http://www.pipeline.com/~richardpence/genlinks.htm

Do I assume that a possible relative is also Jewish?

"I've discovered that families who converted from Judaism a few generations ago, are often uncomfortable when I appear to assume they're Jewish. Accordingly, when I write to someone who may be descended from someone on my family list, I always write "My ancestor was [Name] of [town]; the family at that time was Jewish." From a posting by Michael Bernet mbernet@aol.com

How do I determine the specific birthplaces of my ancestors?

Check first their arrival records (aka immigration records). The U S National Archives. You can also obtain copies of arrival records through the LDS Family History Library, but it is somewhat more cumbersome to obtain arrival records from the LDS Library. Also, documents such as naturalization papers, alien registration forms, etc. may provide birthplace.

People Search - Here is an incredible resource - Web Detective. This commercial site offers many methods of finding people and places and is well worth your time. Free search offer.
http://tmargulis.search8888.hop.clickbank.net

A good source for learning more about 'the Jewish world' is to read the many fine articles written by Schelly Talalay Dardashti in the On-Line Edition of the Jerusalem Post
http://www.jpost.com/

Good Advice

"I'd like to thank the 60+ people who responded to my question concerning an initial Family Finder contact: I called a family "mine," when actually it was my ex-husbands, my children's and grandchildren's family."

"What I've learned from your answers:"

"1. I did nothing improper or uncommon, however it would have been better to clearly state that I was researching my children's ancestry in my initial email to the "Family Finder" listee."

"2. Good Advise: It is better not to reveal too much personal information in an initial contact with a fellow researcher; it's not necessary and can come back to haunt you if you find you are dealing with a "nut." Use the same precautionary measures you would take in any email "transaction," and remember you are dealing with a total stranger, Jewish Genner or not!"

"3. Many other people reported having had experiences with unpleasant, rude, or seemingly "crazy" researchers. A number of people told of finding a family connection, sending their family information and getting no information in return and not even a thank you. One Genner reported a
threat of a lawsuit from a father whose son had sent family information. These kinds of things clearly are the exception to the usual way such
contacts go."

"4. Most contacts with other Genners are friendly exchanges whether or not a family connection is made; this has been my experience also."

"My sincere thanks to the wonderful group of people who chose to offer comfort to an obviously distressed fellow researcher, and I appreciate the kindness, the warmth, and the stories so freely shared with me!" From a posting by Roberta Rosen Long Beach, CA

Howard Relles posted the following: Thanks for your response on this thread: in article 20061005202630.83591.qmail@web33114.mail.mud.yahoo.com,

From a posting by Howard Relles at rellesh@yahoo.com

I've been working on a method to locate living descendents of my shtetls (Czortkow and Jagielnica, both formerly in Austrian Galicia) for some time now. I tried a couple of similar things with your shtetl of Kletsk and think it would also work for you.

Hmmm, yes, that was the first part of the subject of my post, "locating living descendents of a shtetl" -- a general subject about which I certainly want to learn much more. The second part of my subject "--are shtetl-linked family names useful?" narrowed it quite a bit. Thanks for speaking to the broad question!

First, go to the Ellis Island Database search page of Steve Morse:
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/EIDB/ellis.html
Next enter just two things: Last Name, Starts With: A Town Name, Starts With: Klet This gave me 14 immigrants from Kletsk (some listed as Kletzk, Russia, some as Kletzk, Poland, and some as just Kletzk (no country indicated)). Much more data, of course, would be in each ship's record.

Next, I tried the search again using Last Name, Starts With: K (since you have "Kirzner" relatives). This led to upwards of 160 people including some with variants of the Kirzner name.

Right, I've been here before, did this a number of times. I'm curious why you put in any Last Name entry at all, as one isn't required by this "new format" query form, and one can get all the immigrants from a particular place in one search -- well, once you filter out all the false hits due to place name similarity. It's a bit tedious, to be sure...

For the most part, the immigrants could not correct anything because (1) this may have been the first time their name was ever written in English, (2) the officer was in uniform and not to be argued with, (3) they couldn't read it anyway since they may have only been familiar with Cyrillic or Hebrew writing.)

Yes, that makes sense. Well, it doesn't cover the additional complication that my relatives were either quite furtive or very casual about naming themselves. I've heard many Eastern European Jews were simply in the habit of answering officials evasively.

For my towns, I am still collecting all of the ship's manifest data for about 1500 immigrants. Some family names are repeated often.

Brave and dedicated! That's what I would like to do. There's a certain amount of simple technical challenge in capturing data from the pages of raw hits

Then there's the first weeding out of the obvious false hits based on similar but-clearly-different town names -- for example, I think "Kletman, Russia" is not likely a misspelling of "Kletsk, Russia". Then one might want to examine some or maybe all of the passenger records and in some cases the scanned manifests for "interesting" data like who was traveling with this individual... anyone interesting?

I've also been scratching my head about how to store such data. Spreadsheet? Database application? Text editor? Then there's the potential issue of merging results from searches of other databases.
The next part of my plan may then be to search the typical white pages phone
books on the Internet to find current people with the same last names and then write to them to see if any know they are direct descendents of my Galician towns.

How about using infobel.com, a free service which gives complete U.S. coverage in one try -- or state-by-state if you prefer. I've found this website to be very handy.

It will take a lot of time to go through all 26 letters for Last Name, Starts With, and much more to collect all of the ship's data.

Yes, my fingers are getting tired just thinking about it. I think there are about 900 Ellis Island hits for "Kletsk" and the obvious variants. (Maybe your shtetl was approximately twice the size of mine?)

But, next, as I did, you could also search using spelling variants of the town and then see if the town names were actually misread by those who made up the EIDB (a very common occurrence). The funniest one I've found so far is for another town I'm working on: Podhajce; EIDB had it listed as Foodhajce but, when I read the record, it was clearly Podhajce. As many of you may know, handwriting was not always clear either. So, for example, if your looking for a town that starts with "P", I would urge you to check similar EIDB spellings that start with any of the following: C, D, E, F, G, I, J, L, R, S, T, Y, and Z. As I was, you might be surprised to finally find the record you've been searching for.

Right. I've been collecting all the official and informal variations of "Kletsk" since I started this, and there are quite a few. But I haven't tried to account for the likely variations due to handwriting.

It is my experience that the three sources of data are very difficult to link up: Almost nothing I have found in old-country records -- unfortunately not much -- connects to people I've found in Ellis Island searches, and both these in turn are very disjoint with what I've seen in searches of U.S. databases or other sources Is your experience different?

So far, I've had some luck locating a few landsmen with very unique family names through infobel.com searches. But if infobel.com returns more than a dozen or so hits, especially if they are widely distributed over the U.S., it seems altogether too daunting to track down descendents on the sole basis of a hit at Ellis Island.

By the way, my grandfather Joseph Kirzner changed his name to "Joseph Smith" at sometime following his arrival in the U.S. Want a challenge? From a posting by Henry Neugass henryn@spacebbs.com

Dealing with Polish Archives - "I would put all requests in Polish, and I would make sure the researcher is fluent in Polish and Russian for Russian Partition lands, and Polish and German for German/Austrian Partition Lands or else a lot is lost in the translation. From a posting by Leslie Gyi

Newsgroups - the newsgroup soc.genealogy may be the most fertile place to exchange ideas on your roots, but another newsgroup may make more sense as your first stop on the Usenet: news.announce.newusers This newsgroup has FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions, and some answers) for those novices to the discussion give and take of newsgroups.
http://www.faqs.org/faqs

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