Third Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge

Bill West at West in New England is hosting his Third Annual Great Genealogy Poetry Challenge

Find a poem by a local poet, famous or obscure, from the region one of your ancestors lived in. It can be about an historical event, a legend, a person, or even about some place (like a river)or a local animal. It can even be a poem you or one of your ancestors have written! Or if you prefer, post the lyrics of a song or a link to a video of someone performing the song.

The deadline for submission is November 20th.  The rest of the details can be read on his blog.

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I have participated in the first two editions of this contest, but between last year and now I have come to the conclusion my Feinstein/Dudelsack ancestors arrived from Volhynia, Russia.  So I decided to find a Volhynian poet. It wasn't difficult, and I was pleasantly surprised, as he turned out to already be one of my favorite poets.

In 1873, Chaim Nachman Bialik was born in Radi, Volhynia. Bialik's father died in 1880, when Bialik was 7 years old. In his poems, Bialik romanticized the misery of his childhood, describing seven orphans left behind—though modern biographers believe there were fewer children, including grown step-siblings who did not need to be supported. Be that as it may, from the age 7 onwards Bialik was raised in Zhitomir by his grandfather. (source).

Bialik is considered by many to be the "father of Modern Hebrew poetry," and it is great to see he was raised in the same town (Zhitomir) my great great grandfather's brother, Julius, put down as his town of origin on his immigration papers.  Selig and Julius Dudelsack left Russia in the 1890s, a decade before Bialik began publishing poetry - but did the Dudelsack family know Bialik's grandfather?

Bialik's poetry (in Hebrew) can be found here.

I share an excerpt below of an English translation. with a link to another site where the entire poem can be read. (While the original Hebrew was written in 1904, the translation is still under copyright.) The poem below was read in 2003 at the Memorial for the fallen Columbia astronauts.
 
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After My Death

Say this when you mourn for me:

There was a man – and look, he is no more.
He died before his time.
The music of his life suddenly stopped.
A pity!  There was another song in him.
Now it is lost
forever.

(Read the rest of the poem)

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Bialik is also known for his gathering and editing of the Sefer Ha-gaddah (Legends from Talmud and Midrash)



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Note for the curious - actress Mayim Bialik has indicated she is descended from a sibling of Bialik's.

Re-viewing Documents

The word, "reviewing" literally means "seeing again."

A while back I contacted the local Moolah Shrine Temple for any information they had on my Great Grandfather, Herman Feinstein's membership.  (The Moolah Temple is a masonic organization)  They sent me the application he filled out in 1927.

One piece of information on the document stood out: his birthplace.  This was the first document I found which narrowed down the origin of this branch of the family to anything smaller than "Russia."  Neither Herman's Social Security Application, nor his father's naturalization document, had been more specific than that.

However, a search for shtetls with names close to Alexandria in the Russian Empire at JewishGen yielded nine.  And I had some cause to be suspicious, since my limited understanding of Masonic organizations suggest they incorporate Egyptian symbolism, so my great grandfather could have creatively selected a town in Russia with an Egyptian counterpart.

The document was sent to me via email, and I downloaded it to a documents folder when I received it; I even emailed a cousin interested in the origin of Herman's mother's family about the contents, but I forgot completely about it.

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I was on Ancestry this week searching on the name of Herman's father - Selig Dudelsack. (Selig changed the family surname to Feinstein.) And I viewed again the Hamburg Passenger Manifest.  There, in the column "Bisheriger Wohnort" (Former Residence) it said "Wolinsky, Russland."

How did I miss that?  The document is in German, and I suspect I focused mainly on the information I could readily read, like the names, and date.  I had the English arrival manifest from Castle Garden. So I went into my email to contact my cousin with this information, and searched for the last email I sent him.  And I rediscovered the document above.  One of the 9 Alexandrias is in the Volhynia district, aka Wolyn, aka Wolinskie.

I then re-viewed the Hamburg manifest of Selig's brother, Judal (Julius).  It said Scitomir (Zhytomyr), which I quickly learned is a major city in Volhynia, about 250 km west of what is currently known as Oleksandriia. Near the eastern boundary of Volhynia, it's actually close to Kiev.  (The balloon on the map below is Oleksandriia.) 

This is of note, since one relative recalls being told Herman was born in Kiev.  The family immigrated when Herman was age 4-5.  It's possible the family lived in both towns during those years. Herman could have also still been creative with his choice of birthplaces on the Moolah Shrine Temple petition.  However, research at JewishGen shows there was a family of Dudelzaks in the Aleksandriiya Yizkor book. (The Yizkor Books are memorial books for those who were murdered in the Holocaust.)

 I don't know if they're related, but some of the names match names in my tree, which raises the odds.  (Though some names are common enough, perhaps not by much.)  "Shmuel" (Samuel) matches the name of Selig's father.  And on the passenger manifest, the name for Herman's brother who was known as "Ben" in America, looks a lot like "Berl."  I thought it was sloppy handwriting, but 'Berel/Beryl' as a Hebrew name isn't completely unheard of.

Also, according to Familysearch, I may also have a lead on some potential cousins who made it to America:

Srul (age 17) and Schmarje (age 45) Dudelzak arrived at Ellis Island in March of 1906, and their last residence was Alexandrie.   (However, it doesn't state specifically Alexandrie, Volhynia.  It could be one of the other 8 towns.)

Week #15 Genealogy Blogging Prompt

Week 15. List some vital signs. Talk about specific birth, marriage and death certificates. Topics may include misspelled names, fudged dates, other anomalies that stand out in your records.

What was my second great grandmother, Rose Newmark's maiden name? I've blogged about this conundrum before, but I thought I would share with you some of the confusing documentation.

Three birth certificates of her youngest children Kate, Cecile (Cissie) and Israel David (Buddy). All three born in England, though the family had originated in the town of Warka, in the province of Warsaw. (If the Declaration of Intents filed upon their arrival in the US are accurate. I might doubt it if they had written down Warsaw, as it is common that immigrants wrote down the large cities nearest to their origin. But they didn't.)

On Kate's birth certificate, her mother's maiden name is listed as Sankad

On Cecile's birth certificate her maiden name is 'Sonka'
On Israel David's birth certificate it is 'Sandgart'
Her husband, Samuel, was the informant for both of the daughters. Rose was the informant for Israel. One might assume she pronounced her name more clearly than her husband, though that is uncertain. Both were illiterate in English, as both signed their names with an X.

On her death certificate her maiden name was listed as 'Sundberg', and the informant was her son, Barney (my great grandfather). Her father's name is listed as Hirsch.

A search of the JewishGen databases (now also available at Ancestry) reveals three individuals named Cantkert (pronounced Tsantkert) in the 1907 Duma Voter Lists in the town of Warka, one of them named Hersz. It is conceivable her father was still alive in 1907. If born 30 years before Rose, he would still have only been 72 in 1907. Unfortunately, all the voter lists indicate is that he was over 25. However, since this family was residing in the same town I know Rose and her husband Samuel came from, and the surname would have been pronounced close to what ended up on her children's birth certificates, it is my best lead.

Royal Mystery Solved?

Bone shards identified as that of Crown Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria ending century-long mystery of the whereabouts of the heirs to the Russian czar.

"It was 99.9 percent clear they had all been killed; now with these shards, it's 100 percent," said Nadia Kizenko, a Russian scholar at the University at Albany, State University of New York. "Those who regret this news will be those who liked the royal pretender myth."

Questions

1) Shards? How many shards? Too many to survive without? If a leg is injured, you can amputate the leg, but go on living.

2) At best, we really only know that the two heirs died and their remains ended up in the same forest where their parents died. Right? How does this end the mystery? Or at least, how does this end the myth?

Birthdays, Brothers, and Euphemisms

Boris Efimov turned 107 on September 28th. Billed as "perhaps the oldest Jew in the world" (can't be positive of course), he is best known for caricatures he drew of Hitler, Goebbels and others. He is still employed in Russia as a cartoonist for the newspaper, Izvestia, where he's been for 85 years.

In his childhood, Boris Efimov and his brother – now a well-known journalist Mikhail Koltsov – both bore the last name Fridlyand. However, as often occurred during the Communist regime, people working in the creative and public sphere took on a pseudonym so as to be able to circulate their works in various Soviet publications.

Since his brother's repression during the terrifying years of Stalin's reign, Boris Efimov is often known to say "I live two lives – one for myself and one for my brother"

I read that and, not completely understanding the last sentence, thought to myself, "How old is his brother?" and started looking for information about him. I learned that his brother was 'most severely' repressed in 1940 or 1942. Luckily he was 'rehabilitated' by the Soviet government in 1954...but not by a reanimator as skilled as Anita Blake. Alas.

It seems I'm not up on my euphemisms. The story about Boris, though is a good one. He has certainly seen a lot, and has lived to see a Russia with greater freedom.

SS-5

About 6-8 weeks ago I ordered the SS-5 for an ancestor of mine. The SS-5 is the Social Security Application form. It finally arrived this weekend. (Link describes what the SS-5 is, and how to order one.)

The SS-5 has a lot of useful information, including where the individual was employed, their address, and names of boh parents, but I ordered it primarily because it is supposed to contain as detailed a place of birth as the applicant knew. I am trying to figure out the town in Russia he was born in. Every other document just says ‘Russia’. He’s one of my Dudelsack ancestors, though he would have had his name changed at age 4.

Unfortunately, by 1936 when Social Security began and he applied, both of his parents were dead, and it turns out he didn’t know the town, so I am still in the dark.

Dudelsack

The Dudelsack was once perhaps the most widespread bagpipe in Europe. German-speaking people today still often apply the name generically to all bagpipes, though the correct word is “sackpfife” (literally, sackpipe). An ancient instrument, it is seen - sometimes in considerable detail - in a large number of early paintings including some great masterpieces. At some point, probably in the nineteenth century, it seems to have all but vanished. There exists today only one early specimen, in an Austrian museum, and there is some controversy about how old all or parts of that pipe are. Nevertheless it has been possible to reconstruct the Dudelsack through a combination of study of early paintings and music, and today it enjoys a great revival evidenced by many players and numerous makers. - Source

I have ancestors who were named Dudelsack. They were from Poland/Russia, and not Germany, but as the snippet above indicates, the musical instrument was widespread. I’m not sure if it means they were musicians, instrument makers, or whether someone resembled a bagpipe in a appearance. They changed their name when they entered the US.

It’s a pretty rare name. In the US 1920 census, there were 2 Dudelsacks. Jacob, and his wife, Ida. On the ship manifests from the 1880s-1910s, 30-40 different Dudelsacks arrived in the US. It appears only Jacob kept his name. Jacob must have been extremely proud of his ancestry. I have no idea if I’m related; he appears to have come from Austria, and my Dudelsack ancestor didn’t.

The other possible reason for the ‘disappearance’ is that all the Dudelsacks who arrived in the US suffered massive spelling errors on the various census. It’s not an easy name to spell. At Castlegarden.org, my ancestor is listed under ‘Dudersack’, and a possible brother under ‘Dudelsuck’. In the 1920 census, there is one family of Doodlesseks in Massachussets.