Tag Archives: galicia

Rzeszów - 1899

Communities tied to Rzeszów (Reisha), Poland via marriage

You might be wondering how communities could be tied to a town via marriage. I’ve gone through about a dozen years of marriage contracts for the Jewish community of Rzeszów, Poland (in Fond 533 in the Rzeszów Archives) from about 1898 to 1910, and looked for towns that were represented by official stamps used in the documents. Rzeszów was known as Reisha (in Yiddish among the Jewish community), and it was a major community in the Austrian province of Galicia, which was later split between Eastern Poland (where Rzeszów is located) and Western Ukraine. Much of my father’s family lived in the town during this period.

In the wedding files, there are frequently also birth certificates, showing which community one or more of the couple getting married came from originally. Thus if a man from outside of Rzeszow was marrying a woman in Rzeszów, his birth certificate would generally be included in the file. The birth certificates were stamped with a special stamp representing the Jewish community of the town the record was from (to confirm its authenticity), and those stamps are the basis of this post. Keep this in mind when searching for birth certificates from towns that have no records – did the person get married somewhere else? Did you find that marriage record yet? The marriage certificates would generally be stamped as well, but by the officiating rabbi. Over those dozen years there are close to a hundred towns represented, and over 50 rabbis. Obviously many of these towns (and rabbis) repeat. Not surprisingly, the towns that are larger and closer tend to repeat more frequently.

Below you’ll see all the stamps. Click on any image to load the full size image so you can see it better (you’ll need to go Back to get back to the list). For towns in Poland, I’ve linked the town name to the page for that town in the B&F Compendium of Jewish Genealogy. Keep in mind that this list is in no way comprehenive. It is just suggestive of which communities the Jewish community of Rzeszów were most connected to via marriage during those years. It might be possible to do a more scientific study of the records and generate statistics on which communities married which other communities, but that’s for someone else to do. It was also very common in Galicia during this period for Jews to marry religiously without a civil marriage, and these records only show the civil marriages, so these are not the only towns, but the towns in which people married someone in Rzeszów that a civil record exists.

For each town that stamps exist for I have posted each stamp. If the same stamp repeats (which happens often) I only show it once. If the stamp changes, I show the new stamp. The same for the rabbi’s stamps, which also change occasionally.

Continue reading Communities tied to Rzeszów (Reisha), Poland via marriage

Introducing B&F Enhanced Genealogy Search

So it’s been two weeks since I last posted, and that’s because I’ve been busy on a new project. When Mocavo, a search engine dedicated to genealogy, launched a couple of weeks ago, I was inspired to figure out exactly how they were returning the results they were returning, and how one can create topic-specific search engines.

It was not clear to me exactly how Mocavo collected its results – if for example it uses results from another search engine, and just releases the results that match a pre-set list of genealogy-oriented web sites, or if Mocavo is indeed operating its own search ‘spider’ to crawl the web and collect its own results. It seemed clear that while Mocavo did find good results within a number of major genealogy web sites, it didn’t appear to find results on many minor sites, or on major general web sites that might have small genealogy sections. For example, if someone posted a web page on their family on their own web site, or started a Yahoo Group to discuss a particular town or surname (such as described in my earlier post on mailing lists), it did not seem to appear on Mocavo. I don’t know what algorithm Mocavo uses, but I’m guessing it can’t currently find particular sites within larger general websites like Yahoo, so it ignores Yahoo altogether (to eliminate the chance of false positives).

Not knowing anything about how Mocavo put together their site, I decided to see what I could put together myself. Using tools provided by Google (I suspect Mocavo uses the same tools, just their paid versions that allow them much greater customization) I worked over the past couple of weeks to put together my own genealogy search engine. It is a bit more inclusive in how it determines which sites to search than Mocavo. It is thus more likely to find small genealogy sites, but also more likely to find some less-than-relevant results. That’s a compromise I’ve struck, which I think returns many interesting results than you might not find on Mocavo. Of course, Mocavo has the advantage of being a real company with employees who get paid to update the search results, so they can improve their results over time. As this is not my full-time job, I don’t have that luxury. Don’t think, however, that I’m trying to compete with Mocavo. This is just my own attempt at creating a useful search tool for genealogists, inspired by Mocavo.

Unfortunately one of the downsides of Google’s free search tools is ads. I can’t stop the ads from showing up unless I’m willing to pay Google for that privilege. I don’t know why Google shows ads more aggressively on custom search engines like this one then they do on their own search engine, but they do. I’m sorry about that, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

When looking through the tools available to me, I tried to figure out how I could improve the results for genealogists. I came up with an interesting idea, but Google restricts how useful it can be. Basically when towns have undergone name changes or have different names in different languages, and a record shows up under a name of a town that is different than the version of the name you are searching, you will not get results. Google will actually help here with major cities, so for example if you search for Wien it knows to search for Vienna, but it does not know every version of every town one might be searching for, nor frankly should it as this technique can actually reduce the usefulness of search results when alternate names overlap. In any event, Google allows you to define synonyms for search terms, but limits the amount you can do.

As I was limited, I had to choose a small area to try this technique out on, and I chose the Galicia region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is a particularly good region to choose, as it has been controlled by many different countries over time, had many different languages spoken, and most towns have many names. It’s also small enough of a region that it fits within the limits of what Google allows me to do. Part of the problem is that Google only allows uni-directional synonyms, which means you need to know which town name to search or the synonyms won’t kick in. To use a set of names that was easily definable, I’ve chosen to use the names at the top of the Locality Pages from the JewishGen Community Database for the given towns. Basically, whichever name appears at the top of a Locality Page for the given town is the one you should use – except don’t use accent marks or apostrophes in the name. You should use dashes if they are in the name. Obviously it must be a town that was part of Galicia. While this will only help people who are searching with one of the hundreds of Galician towns in their search query, if you are not searching with one of these town names, the search engine will still work well to help you find results among the many sites it does search.

I am open to all feedback on this search engine, and welcome feedback in the comments. Please leave comments on the search page itself, and not on this post, as this post is just an introduction and in the future people will just go straight to the search page.

Without further ado, I introduce B&F Enhanced Genealogy Search.

Religious marriages, civil marriages and surnames from mothers

For many Jewish genealogists, there is a kind of ultimate brick wall of reaching past the institution of surnames around two hundred years ago. Surnames were instituted in different areas at different times, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire, for example, instituted surnames by declaration of their emperor in 1787. When the empire expanded in 1795 absorbing part of Poland, it took in a large Jewish population which were for the first time required to take on surnames. Depending on where they lived, some Jews were not required to take on names for another decade or more after that, so if you have successfully tracked back your family to the point where they adopted surnames, it’s not so easy to reach past that point. There are some patronymic records, which are records that only list the first name of a person and the name of their father, that exist in these areas going further back, and it may be possible to track your family back for a generation before surnames, but that’s really the maximum most people will be able to accomplish if their families did not have surnames earlier (which some rabbinic families did, as did many Sephardim).

Adding to the difficulty of tracking back that far is that many Jews had little use for their assigned surnames in the 19th century. Thus, even though they had assigned surnames which the government used to assess taxes, conscript men into the army, etc., in terms of everyday usage Jews really didn’t care about their surnames. In addition, civil marriage was largely ignored by many Jews, as it generally was expensive. Jews tended to have religious marriages and only got civilly married if they or their children for some reason needed it. This thus lead to many civil marriages long after a couple had their children, something which might seem strange at first glance, but you need to realize thati n most cases these people did get married (religiously) before they had children, they were just not married from the perspective of the state.

So what happened if your parents did not have a civil marriage? In some cases it meant you would need to take your mother’s maiden name as your surname. That’s because even if your father was listed on your birth certificate, he was not legally married to your mother, and thus you needed to take on your mother’s last name for legal purposes. If you parents were legally married at a later date, a note could be written on your birth certificate in the town records showing that your parents were legally married, and thus declaring you as legitimate (and able to take your father’s name).

In the late 19th and early 20th century, civil marriage became easier for Jews, and thus around this time if you look at marriage records you will see a large number of marriages that seem to be relatively old people. In many cases these married couples already had children and grandchildren. As their children and grandchildren became more mobile and wanted to travel out of the small towns they had been in, they needed travel documents, and in some cases this was only made possible if their older parents got married (at least if they wanted to get travel documents with their father’s surname instead of their mothers).

I have a number of examples of children taking on their mother’s surnames in my own family.

In one case two sons took on their mother’s surname when born. One traveled through Europe and eventually ended up in the US, where the passenger manifest for the ship he arrived in the US on shows he and his children still with his mother’s surname. When he became a naturalized citizen a number of years later, however, he had already changed his surname to that of his father (as did his children). The second son moved to Israel, where he kept his mother’s surname. Thus two brothers living in different countries with different surnames.

Another case was utterly confusing for a long time, until I was finally able to put the pieces together. I had the birth record for a woman named Taube Traurig. I had birth records for children of Taube Traurig and a man named Wigdor Kessler. It seemed likely that the Taube Traurig from the original birth record and the Taube Traurig who had children with Wigdor Kessler were the same person. Then I ran into something strange, a death certificate for Taube Traurig (relatively young) before the children were born. This thus indicated either a mistake in the records, or a second Taube Traurig. The problem was that I didn’t have another Taube Traurig in my records that could be the mother (there was another Taube Traurig, but she was the mother of the two sons in the previous example – and a first cousin of the one in this example).

This was a mystery for a long time, until I noticed a notation on the original Taube Traurig’s birth record that had the name Wigdor Kessler on it. That made no sense to me. How could the name of her husband be on her birth record? Not being able to translate the Polish annotation, I posted an image of the birth record to ViewMate, a great service from JewishGen that lets you post an image or photograph and ask for help with translating records or any general problem-solving that you think others can help you with concerning the image. The responses I got indicated that the parents of Taube Traurig had been legally married in 1906, thus making all of their children ‘legitimate’ in the eyes of the state. Wigdor Kessler had signed the records of the couple’s children in 1906 as a witness that they were now considered legitimate by the state.

The person who translated the record for me had said something which stuck with me – he said Wigdor Kessler was not listed as the husband of Taube Traurig in the record. Now I didn’t necessarily think they would require him to state he was the husband, but I also guessed the person telling me this had seen other similar records and if he made the comment, he probably had seen others indicate they were the husband. I also found another record which showed Wigdor Kessler having a child several years later with a Taube Engelberg instead of Taube Traurig. That was utterly confusing since the original Taube Traurig had a sister Sara who had married someone with the last name Engelberg.

So what’s the answer here? The Taube married to Wigdor Kessler was the niece of the Taube in the original birth record. Searching through the marriage records I was able to find a marriage record between Wigdor Schopf and Taube Engelberg after all the children who were born where Taube’s name was listed as Taube Traurig, and before the child was born where she is listed as Taube Engelberg on the birth record. Who is Wigdor Schopf you’re asking? Schopf was Wigdor Kessler’s mother’s name (as shown in the marriage record). Traurig was Taube’s mother’s name. Her father’s name was Engelberg. Thus in all the earlier birth records she had been using her mother’s surname. Wigdor had used his father’s name all along on the birth records of his children, although why he had to use his mother’s surname in the marriage record is not clear.

Thus there were four birth records from 1898, 1900, 1902 and 1904 where Wigdor used his father’s surname and Taube used her mother’s surname. A wedding record in 1905 where Wigdor used his mother’s surname and Taube used her father’s surname. Finally, a birth record in 1910 where Wigdor uses his father’s surname and Taube uses her father’s surname.

What is not clear is why Wigdor was able to use his father’s surname in his childrens’ birth records but not his own marriage record, and why Taube used her mother’s surname in the first four birth records, but then used her father’s surname in her marriage record and in the later birth record. I would surmise that this later Taube’s parents were legally married in between the birth of Taube’s fourth child in 1904 and her marriage in 1905, although I have nothing to indicate that other than her own change of recorded name.

So what lessons have we learned here? If you’re researching your Jewish family in Poland or the surrounding countries, and they were born in the 19th century, don’t assume a person took on their father’s surname. Genealogy programs tend to automatically fill in the father’s surname when adding a child record, thus it’s easy to create a record where you assign the father’s surname even if you have no evidence that the child used the father’s surname. In many cases it might be a safe assumption, but in the case of 19th century Jewish records in Europe it clearly is not a safe assumption.

Two books that discuss some of the issues involved here are Suzan Wynne’s The Galizianers: The Jews of Galicia, 1772-1928 and Alexander Beider’s A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia. If you’re asking why I’m pointing to two books that specifically deal with Galicia (a region of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire which currently is partly in Poland and partly in the Ukraine), it’s because the issues discussed here were particularly prevalent in Galicia, and as a big chunk of my family originates in Galicia, it’s also the area I know the most about (and of which I know about relevant books).

If you’ve had similar stories of relatives taking on their mother’s surname, please add your stories in the comments.