Category Archives: Resources

A look at new Israeli databases

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As mentioned previously I have been involved in the past year in building a new genealogy website in Israel, genealogy.org.il, for the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA). The site has already been recognized as one of the top 40 international genealogy sites by Family Tree Magazine. One of the big issues I’ve had to deal with recently was upgrading the site to deal with high number of users. The original server the site was on was not able to handle the numbers of users we were getting, and we’ve now moved the site onto a much better server that can handle the site, and allows us to easily add capacity as needed (something impossible on our last server).

While I’ve been working on the nuts and bolts of the site, certainly the reason the site has been so successful is not my work, but more the work of the many IGRA volunteers, led by Rose Feldman, who have been adding dozens of new databases to the site. Their productivity is frankly mind-blowing. Since we launched in January of this year, Rose and her volunteer army have added nearly 50 new databases to the site, and more are coming on-line all the time. Think about that – they are adding more than a database each week. This is only the beginning.

Databases are categorized into three time periods:

  • Ottoman Administration (pre-1917)
  • British Administration (1917-1948)
  • Israeli Administration (1948-)

For those researching Jewish relatives, these databases can help pinpoint where a relative may have been living at specific points in time, and can lead you in new directions in your research. Some records include the person’s exact address.

Databases include things like voter lists, lists of registered lawyers, accountants, doctors and nurses, candidates for various elections, phone books, burial lists, etc. There are over 60,000 records in the database now, and each record contains multiple pieces of information.

The current databases include:

Ottoman Administration (-1917)

  • List of Students & Staff of Gymnasia Haivrit, Yaffo 1908-9
  • Kollel List 1912 Safed (population register of families receiving funds “haluka“)
  • Safed Burials 1433-2000 from the new cemetery and part of the old cemetery

British Administration (1917-1948)

  • Births in African and Asian Protectorates for the Years 1916-1940
  • Drishat Shalom (Regards) 1919
  • UK Passport requests made in Safed 1921- 1951
  • Donors from UK for Safed Old Age Home run by Simcha Shulman 1924-1929
  • First National Conference of Edot Hamizrah in Eretz Israel – Protocol 1925
  • Nurse Certification 1923-1948
  • Earthquake Donations 1927
  • Voters’ List for Haifa 1928
  • Queries about Land Registries 1928-1929
  • Queries about compensation for loss of property during the disturbances of 1929
  • Voters’ List for Municipal Council Petah Tikva 1930
  • Members of Agricultural Organizations in Petah Tikvah 1931-1936
  • Voters’ List for Municipal Council Petah Tikva 1932
  • Voters’ List for Municipal Council Safed 1932
  • Galician Kollel Safed 1932
  • Voters’ List from Petah Tikva for the 18th Zionist Congress 1933
  • List of Sephardic Males in Safed 1934
  • Award of Silver Jubilee Medals 1935
  • Rehavia Address Book June 1935
  • Deaths in African and Asian Protectorates for the Years 1936-1940
  • Members of the National Youth Aliyah Committee of Hadassah 1937
  • Members of the Histadrut Hamorim (Teachers’ Council) 1939
  • List of Teachers of the Dept. of Education of Havaad HaLeumi 1940-41
  • Candidates for the 1941 Hahistadrut Haklalit
  • Candidates for the 1941 Va’adat Hapoalot (The Women’s Workers’ Council)
  • Hebrew Soldiers of the Yishuv who fell and perished in World War II 1940-1945
  • Refugees in Mauritius 1944-45
  • Swiss Aliyah Requests 1945
  • List of Donors for Repairs of Mikva in Safed 1947
  • Yahrzeit List from the Safed Old Age Home
  • List of people who have files in Beit HaMeiri in Safed

Israeli Administration (1948-)

  • List of registered doctors 1948-1957
  • List of Candidates for the First Knesset (C0nstituent Assembly) 1949
  • Candidates for the 1949 Hahistadrut Haklalit (General Council Elections)
  • Candidates for the 1949 Moatzet Hapoalot (The Women’s Workers’ Council)
  • Candidates for the 1949 Histadrut Hahaklaim (Farmers’ Council)
  • Candidates for the 1949 Histadrut Hapekidim (Clerks’ Council)
  • Candidates for the second Knesset elections 1951
  • Practical Nurses 1951-52
  • List of Candidates for the Third Knesset 1955
  • Authorized People to act as Accountants 5716 (1955-56)
  • List of Persons Authorized to Act as Lawyers in Civil Courts in 1956
  • Authorized People to act as Accountants 5717 (1956-57)
  • Candidates for the 1959 Histadrut Hapekidim (Clerks’ Council)
  • Candidates for the 1959 Histadrut Hahaklaim (Farmers’ Council)

Some databases that are coming online soon, include:

  • Rehavia Address Book June 1937
  • Candidates for the 1959 HaHistadrut Haklalit (General Council Elections)
  • Candidates for the 1959 Va’adat Hapoalot (The Women’s Workers’ Council)

The best news is that the launch of a new advanced search engine for these records is coming online very soon (as in days). Few genealogy societies, if any, will have the kind of advanced search capabilities we will have on the site. It’s an exciting time for researching genealogy in Israel.

To stay up-to-date on the launch of the new search engine and on the ongoing launch of new databases, follow IGRA on their Facebook Page (facebook.com/israelgenealogy) or via Twitter (twitter.com/israelgenealogy). Of course, if you want to comment on the web site and where it can be improved, you can always comment here and I’ll see what I can do.

Jewish Databases from Aleppo, Syria

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Aleppo Jewish Wedding 1914
Jewish Wedding in Aleppo, Syria in 1914

Record keeping by the government in many of areas where Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews lived simply didn’t exist before the 1920s. With the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after WWI, the new governments in those areas began to keep records of things like births and marriages, but how does one research family events that occurred earlier? The short answer is, unfortunately, with difficultly. Since the governments did not systemically keep track of events, you must look to the local Jewish communities and their own records, if they exist.

That said, one of the more interesting projects to assist a specific community with family research is the Sephardic Heritage Project, which has indexed a number of important collections of vital records from Aleppo, Syria, including:

  • Aleppo Britot – More than 7500 circumcision records dating from 1868-1945
  • Aleppo Marriage Database – 1354 records – For the  most part, the data covers 1847-1850, 1868-1877, and 1893-1934. However, we included a few records found in 1811and 1855 that were  derived from Ketubot manuscripts.
  • Aleppo Eulogies Database – Deaths in Aleppo, Syria, covering sporadic entries from periods as early as 1716 -1946

This effort has been led by Sarina Roffé, who founded the project in 2004, and had overseen the collection and translation of records in Israel and New York. You can read Sarina’s description of the Aleppo Jewish community in her JewishGen article The Jews of Aleppo.

Note that these databases are all hosted on Jeffrey Malka’s SephardicGen web site. For general information on Sephardi/Mizrachi genealogy, I recommend starting with Jeffrey Malka’s Resource Guide on the Israel Genealogy Research Association web site.

New York records from 1940 Census now searchable!

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New York was the most populous state in 1940 with over 13 million residents. It’s not surprising it has taken longer than some other states to be made searchable in the 1940 Federal Census. Considering it’s importance, it’s also not surprising that it has been indexed early in the process compared to some other states.

Ancestry.com has just made their index for New York available online, after previously only having Delaware, Maine, Nevada and the District of Columbia available. None of the previous states had more than a million residents in 1940 (Nevada had just 110,247 residents), so the jump to New York is actually quite a large one, and certainly a very important one for Jewish researchers.

In 1940 there were nearly 5 million Jews in the US (a much higher percentage, 3.7%, of the US population than currently), and New York was home to more than 2 million of them. In fact, over 90% of those Jews lived in just New York City. Statistically speaking, if you had Jewish relatives in the US in 1940, chances are some of them were living in New York.

As there were many Jewish refugees streaming into the US in 1940, keep in mind that your family would have to have been living in the US at midnight at the beginning of April 1, 1940 in order to be recorded in the census. My grandfather actually arrived in the US by ship on April 1, 1940 and thus should not have been recorded (and as far as I can tell was not) because he arrived some hours after the midnight cut-off for being recorded in the census. The census wasn’t recorded all on April 1, 1940, but rather one of the questions asked by the enumerators was where you were living at midnight at the beginning of April 1, and if you were not living in the US then, then you were not recorded. This is true also of children born on April 1 – they were not recorded (or at least should not have been according to the rules).

Of my relatives that were already living in New York when the census was done, I’ve noticed that their names were transcribed wrong. There are always going to be transcription errors in such a large project, but I wonder if this is a result of Ancestry.com’s rumored use of transcribers in China to do all the work. It should be interesting to see how well the 1940 US Census Community Project does their transcriptions, and if the quality will be higher than the Ancestry.com transcriptions. With over 100,000 volunteers, redundant transcribing and an arbitration process, it certainly seems the community project has an advantage, but we’ll have to see when the databases are completed. Right now the only state that overlaps the two efforts is Delaware, so perhaps if someone had relatives in Delaware in 1940, they could comment on the quality of the two transcription efforts.

The good news is that even with the transcription errors, Ancestry.com still found my relatives due to their soundex search capabilities. If you know your relatives were living in New York on April 1, 1940 and can’t find them, however, try varying your search a bit and maybe that will help. I do strongly recommend that when you see transcription errors, you add a correction to the record. If you add the correct spelling, then future searchers will be sure to find the record. To correct a transcription, click on the ‘View/Add Alternate Info’ link in the Page Tools box on the left side of the record page.

For those trying to figure out where their relatives came from in Europe, the 1940 Census has a great addition to previous censuses, in that it asks where they lived in 1935. Both the city and country are listed, so if your relative moved to the US between 1935 and 1940 then this should show where they were living before they moved to the US.

States fully indexed, by company:

  • Ancestry.com: Delaware, Maine, Nevada, New York, District of Columbia (see status of other states – shows Colorado, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia coming soon)
  • Community Project (search on FindMyPast.com): Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia, and New Hampshire – and partial indexes of other states (see status of other states on FamilySearch)
  • MyHeritage.com: Rhode Island and parts of New York

Ancestry.com Launches Autosomal DNA Test

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Today Ancestry.com officially launched their autosomal DNA test, which they call simply: AncestryDNA

AncestryDNA user interface

Frankly, I think the name is a bit confusing considering they have other tests for Y-DNA and mtDNA, but that’s a minor point. This new test now competes with FamilyTreeDNA’s Family Finder test and 23andMe’s Relative Finder test. So how does it compare?

The answer, unfortunately, is that I don’t know yet. The only people who have received results so far, considering it just launched today, are those who participated in the beta test, where Ancestry.com sent out tests to various groups of people that were already customers of Ancestry.com. In fact I was one of the people who received a free (not including shipping) kit, but unfortunately there were problems in getting the kit for a long time due to mail problems, so while I have submitted a kit, I haven’t received my results yet.

What I can tell you is what looks good even before I have a chance to look at the DNA results.

For one, I was very grateful they handle something that the other companies haven’t done yet – you can manage the DNA of other people. With 23andMe and FamilyTreeDNA, you essentially set up an account for each person whose DNA is submitted. This doesn’t always make sense. If you’re submitting the DNA of your grandfather who doesn’t use a computer, then you don’t want to have to deal with a separate account, remembering the password, etc. Ancestry.com handles this much better by allowing you to attach DNA kits from multiple people to your existing account.

Another place where Ancestry.com seems to have put in some thought, is connecting tests to people in your family trees. Of course, Ancestry.com has a major advantage here, as they have very sophisticated family trees, that already integrate with other features of their web site such as finding records. The other companies that pioneered autosomal DNA tests do not have family trees of anywhere near the sophistication of what Ancestry.com offers, and thus Ancestry.com holds a clear advantage in this area. You can attach a test, whether the AncestryDNA autosomal test, or one of the existing Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, to a person in your family tree, and presumably Ancestry.com uses that information to try to figure out connections between people who match DNA. How well that works remains to be seen, but it looks promising.

It’s not clear yet whether or not you’ll be able to upload data from another company, or whether you’ll be able to download your data either. Ancestry.com does allow you to download your Y-DNA and mtDNA results, so it makes sense they would allow this for their autosomal test as well, but this test is still in beta and there is no way to download the data as far as I know.

The test is supposed to be priced at $99 with a membership to Ancestry.com. What does that mean? I’m not sure. Is that a price you get once? or if you want to order more tests do you get that price on all tests? What if you’re not an Ancestry.com member? If you only get one kit at $99, does that renew every year when you renew your membership? I’m sure the pricing will be explained better soon.

Anyone else reading this take part in the beta? Did you receive your results? What did you think?

First 1940 Census Images are online!

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1940 US Census Page from Durham, Maine

Above is a census page from the 1940 US Census. Officially the images are not supposed to be released until 9am Eastern (six hours from now) by the US NAtional Archives, so I’m not sure how this is possible. It would seem the National Archives has been sharing the images early to allow companies to get them up faster. The above image is from Ancestry.com’s site, which somehow has a small number of images from DC, Maine and Nevada up already.

The 1940 US Census is being released today. The official launch is at 9:00am Eastern Time. There will be a live webcast before the launch at 8:30am. If you can get through, the official site for the census is http://1940census.archives.gov/.

Since I wrote about it last time, genealogy company MyHeritage has announced that they will also be indexing the 1940 Census images and providing free access online. They join Ancestry.com and the Archives.com/FamilySearch.org/FindMyPast.com consortium (The US Census Community Project) in indexing the census.

So now all the 1940 census record sites you should know about are:

The official National Archives site: http://1940census.archives.gov/

The US Census Community Project: https://the1940census.com/

Ancestry.com’s 1940 Census: http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2442

MyHeritage: http://www.myheritage.com/1940census

and of course, Stephen Morse’s Unified 1940 Census ED Finder.

One interesting thing about the 1940 census is that is was the first census to have a census time, not just a census day. In other words, in the past the census was recorded based on what the state of the population was on April 1, but in 1940 the census enumerators were instructed to base their information on midnight, April 1, so if lets say a baby was born on April 1, 1940, they won’t show up in the census (since they were not born by midnight). In a strange twist of fate, I have another interesting example in my family – my great-grandmother, grandfather and great-uncle all arrived in the US by ship on April 1, 1940. If the enumerators followed the rules, they shouldn’t be in the 1940 census. I’ll have to wait until the images for New York are up to find out, however. Another great-uncle should, however, be in the records as he arrived earlier. Any strange stories in your family connected to the 1940 Census?