Avotaynu: Spring 2008 issue

The Spring 2008 issue of "Avotaynu: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy" is packed with 19 interesting articles by experts on many aspects of Jewish genealogy.

It is well worth subscribing. Click here for more information.

This issue includes these and more:

Tombstone Identification through Database Merging

Can DNA Testing Confirm Jewish Ancestors?

WIRTH DNA Research in New Directions

Central Zionist Archives: Jerusalem Israel

A Window into the Galveston Plan Immigration at the Central Zionist Archives

IAJGS Chicago 2007 Program: Gins, Cats and DNA

German Passports Found in Shanghai

Search Bureau for Missing Relatives: Brief History and Current Status of Records

Coming to America through Hamburg and Liverpool Part II: Crossing the Atlantic

A Method of Deducing Unknown Surnames of Female Ancestors

Researching Old U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Correspondence and Case Files

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There's more from contributing editors, ask the experts, book reviews and letters. See the complete table of contents here.

UK: Marriage authorizations online, meeting

Tracing the Tribe reported previously (January 2008) that the British Jewish Marriage Authorisation Certificates would be searchable online.

The first batch of records is now available in this long-term collaboration between the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain (JGSGB) and the United Synagogue.

Louise Messik has been single-handedly indexing the records, due to confidentiality agreements with the United Synagogue. She has indexed 3,900 records from February 17, 1880-December 30, 1886; eventually the database will cover 1845-1907.

Search the database here or here. The fee to obtain records is £15 for United Synagogue/JGSGB members; £20 for non-members. Click here for more information.

These records are for marriages under the Office of the Chief Rabbi of England, which provided local rabbis permission to conduct religious ceremonies. The certificate was provided after both bride and groom proved they were Jewish according to Jewish law or had an acceptable conversion certificate.

Other information: Proposed place and date of marriage, Hebrew/English names of the bride and groom, addresses of the couple, country of origin of the couple, Hebrew names of the fathers of bride and groom, Hebrew names of the groom's unmarried brothers (in case of levirate marriage if the groom died without issue) and which would attend the ceremony.

Some researchers asked why there is a confidentiality agreement for such old records and JGSGB chair Laurence Harris provided more information on this issue and about a meeting set to discuss the new database.

When JGSGB enters into agreements to transcribe or index records for other organisations, these organisations often have different sensitivities and requirements concerning their data. It is always necessary for us to be mindful of these requirements, and we need to comply with them in order to gain permission to index/ transcribe and to build up a positive mutual relationship, so that we get offered more databases to transcribe in the future.

With particular reference to the United Synagogue (US) Marriage Authorisations, the US consider the information on the full certificate to be strictly confidential and special arrangements have had to be put in place to ensure that it remains so whilst we are preparing the index.

Without going into too much detail, confidentiality agreements have had to be signed and even I, as Chairman of JGSGB, have no access to the information on the certificates being indexed. I hope this clarifies the confidentiality issue.

The JGSGB will meet at 8pm, Thursday, June 19 to focus on this project, and expert speakers from the London Beth Din, United Synagogue and JGSGB (including Louise Messik) will address

- The certificates and the genealogical clues they hold
- The history and role of the certificates
- How to search the new online index and how to order a certificate
- Audience questions to the panel of speakers

JGSGB member tickets are free; non-members, £5); seating is limited. To obtain a ticket (first come - first served), email Harris at chairman(AT)jgsgb(DOT)org(DOT)uk.

JRI-Poland: New data added

Genealogists and family historians investigating their Polish roots will find their searches more fruitful on the searchable online JRI-Poland Database, with the addition of 160,000 new searchable record indices, indexed data from LDS microfilms of Polish Jewish vital records, and new Lodz area indices.

160,000 NEW SEARCHABLE RECORD INDICES

JRI-Poland's executive director Stanley Diamond of Montreal has announced the addition of one of the largest batches of new data in the group's history. The database contains nearly 3.4 million searchable records.

"More than 160,000 new entries have been added to the JRI-Poland database from 80 towns. The entries include data from 43 towns in our database for the first time as well as new data for later years from previously indexed towns which have had other data in our database."

Data is from 15 Shtetl CO-OPs, 60 Polish State Archives projects and five CRARG (Czestochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group) projects. There were 8,700 additions to the Warsaw Cemetery database, now totaling 65,000 entries.

There are also hundreds of thousands of records from more than 100 towns that cannot yet be uploaded for numerous reasons. Researchers with an interest in Polish records should subscribe to the JRI-Poland mailing list for the most up-to-date information here.

To learn more about towns, record status and how to access indices before they are available online, click here, or email questions@jri-poland.org.

LDS DATA

Hadassah Lipsius, Shtetl CO-OP Coordinator of JRI-Poland, notes that more than 32,000 indices are now available. This includes the newly added towns of Loslau, Nadarzyn, Siedlce, Szczercow, Wolanow and Zory, as well as updated information for Kielce, Konin, Krasnik, Kremenets, Opatow, Opoczno, Ozorkow, Przasnysz and Warszawa.

LODZ

Lodz (Poland) area researchers were notified, by the town's coordinator Roni Seibel Liebowitz, that new indices for towns with records in the Lodz Archives have been added into the online JRI-Poland database.

JRI-Poland's team of Michael Tobias, Stanley Diamond and the town leaders and contributors have made this possible to all researchers. Records include births, marriages, marriage supplements and deaths for these towns:

Alexandrow Lodzki
Bielawy
Konstantynow Lodzki
Lutomiersk
Warta
Widawa
Lodz
Burzenin

See what is now online and what needs to be funded before being made available online for the Lodz area here.

ADDITIONAL JRI-POLAND INFORMATION

As noted above, more than 100 towns have data that cannot be uploaded because funding is still needed.

JRI-Poland researchers and supporters know that making a qualifying contribution towards indexing of records for their town will make them eligible to receive the Excel file will all entries in the project. The amount of the contribution depends on the number of records and number of known researchers with an interest in that specific town. Donations are tax deductible in the US and Canada.

For more information, click on JRI-Poland, go to the "Your Town" link and contact the town leader or archive coordinator for your town, or email questions@jri-poland.org

General donations are also accepted to enable funding of "orphan towns."

When fundraising is complete and the data is eligible to go online, some delays may occur because of quality control and processing issues. Please be patient! If something isn't there today, check back frequently.

Kentucky: Jewish history

I just discovered this interesting piece by Carol Ely on Kentucky's Jewish history at the Kentucky FolkWeb site.

Blintzes and Grits. Bagels and Bluegrass. "Shalom, Y'all." The jokes come from the obvious contrasts between what we think of as Jewish culture and what we think of as Southern. But the reality is a much more complex blending of cultures and identities, creating a unique kind of Jew — the Kentucky Jew.

Jews were present for the very creation of Kentucky. The Virginia mercantile firm of Cohen and Isaacs hired Daniel Boone to scout out their Kentucky lands; and another merchant family, the Gratz family of Philadelphia, set up trading posts on the Ohio (including the river landing at Gratz, Kentucky) and joined the founders of Lexington.

These early Jews were Sephardic Jews, with roots in the dispersion of Jews from Spain to the rest of Europe and the New World. They followed Sephardic traditions of worship and law and were part of an educated and entrepreneurial transatlantic elite.

By the 1840s Jewish traders and peddlers appeared in greater numbers in Kentucky settlements, emigrating from political unrest, poverty, and restrictive laws in Germany. In most of Europe, Jews were not permitted to own land, so most Jewish immigrants did not expect to become farmers. Instead, small-scale retailing, either through door-to-door, town-to-town peddling, or in a small storefront, was the best opportunity open to them. When enough Jews gathered in one place, it was natural to think of formalizing their community as a congregation.

Among Jewish communities in the 19th-early 20th centuries were Louisville, Owensboro, Lexington, Paducah, Covington, Ashland, Henderson, Hopkinsville and Newport, and mentions the influx of German, Polish and Russian immigrants. Today, Ely states, the organized community includes Louisville, Lexington, Owensboro and Paducah.

Virginia: Early Jewish settlement

Here's a fascinating history of early Jewish settlement in Charlottesville, Virginia. Other sections cover business and commerce, Jefferson and the Jews, community establishment, religious institutions, the Levys at Monticello and other sections.

Thanks to researchers in the South, documentation of Jewish history in this region has increased and covers large port cities to rural towns, reflecting the diversity of Jewish immigrants in America.

Charlottesville's history reflects colonial-era Sephardic Jews and 19th century immigrants from Germany and then from Lithuania and Belarus. According to the website, it's important to note that the town was the home of Thomas Jefferson and that the University of Virgina, which he established, was the first American higher education institute that did not impose or require a particular theology of students or faculty.

"To Seek the Peace of the City" was produced in 1994 to spotlight 19th and early 20th century Jewish life in Charlottesville and the University. It expanded on a 1993 exhibit, "Jewish Life at Mr. Jefferson's University," which was part of the school's commemoration of Jefferson's 250th birthday.

Though few in number, Jews were a part of the European colonization of Virginia. Expelled from Spain in the very year that Columbus encountered America, they tried to re-establish their communities in northern and central Europe, North Africa, Palestine, Turkey and the city-states of Italy. These Spanish and Portuguese Jews, called the Sephardim, were among the first to settle the Americas, hoping to find places where they could maintain their distinctive Jewish traditions. By the 1640s Sephardic Jews had established trade networks connecting New York, Charleston, Newport, Philadephia, the Caribbean, and Brazil. Many quickly became prominent and respected professionals.

Ashkenazic Jews, with a style of worship typical of the Germanies and Russia, also sought the New World as a refuge. During the 16th to 18th centuries in Europe, Jews were living as a barely tolerated minority in Germany, Austria, and Poland, and somewhat less precariously in Holland and Italy. Eager to find a safe foothold in the New World, Jews participated in the exploration and settlement of the Atlantic coast of the Americas. A Jewish metallurgist from Prague, Joachim Gaunse (or Jacob Gans), was in Virginia as early as 1585 as part of the first English attempt to settle North America at Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke Colony. Early Sephardic settlers of Virginia included Dr. John de Sequeyra, a specialist in the treatment of the mentally ill, who arrived in Williamsburg in 1745; in his role as a general practitioner, he was the physician of George Washington's stepdaughter Martha Parke Custis. Also prominent were members of the aristocratic Cardozo and Seixas families. 4

On the eve of the American Revolution there were still just a handful of Jews in Virginia, mainly in Richmond. Jacob Cohen (from Oberdorf, Germany) and Isaiah Isaacs (from Frankfort-am-Main, via England) became business partners who sold merchandise and real estate. They helped to finance Daniel Boone's surveys of Kentucky, were ardent patriots, and though they were slaveowners they both freed their slaves in their wills. In addition to their commercial ventures, both were committed to their religion; Isaacs signed all his deeds in Hebrew. He was a founder of Beth Shalome, Richmond's first synagogue, in 1789, and also helped to fund the first Jewish cemetery, on Richmond's Shockoe Hill. He was a man of prominence, elected to Richmond's Common Hall (forerunner of the City Council), just two years after the enactment of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom made it possible for a Jew to hold elective office. He later moved to Charlottesville and died there in 1806.

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